In the poorest neighborhoods of Santiago, Chile, low-income residents
known as pobladores have long lived at the margins-and have long
advocated for the right to housing as part of la vida digna (a life
with dignity). From 2011 to 2015, anthropologist Miguel Pérez conducted
fieldwork among the pobladores of Santiago, where the urban dwellers
and activists he met were part of an emerging social movement that
demanded dignified living conditions, the right to remain in their
neighborhoods of origin, and, more broadly, recognition as citizens
entitled to basic rights. This ethnographic account raises questions
about state policies that conceptualize housing as a commodity rather
than a right, and how poor urban dwellers seek recognition and
articulate political agency against the backdrop of neoliberal policies.
By scrutinizing how Chilean pobladores constitute themselves as
political subjects, this book reveals the mechanisms through which
housing activists develop new imaginaries of citizenship in a country
where the market has been the dominant force organizing social life for
almost forty years. Pérez considers the limits and potentialities of
urban movements, framed by poor people's involvement in subsidy-based
programs, as well as the capacity of low-income residents to struggle
against the commodification of rights by claiming the right to dignity:
a demand based on a moral category that would ultimately become the
driving force behind Chile's 2019 social uprising.
