Squatter Life

Persistence at the Urban Margins of Buenos Aires

Javier Auyero, Sofía Servián

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9781478031505
  9781478028291
• eBook ISBN:
  9781478060482
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

In Squatter Life, sociologist Javier Auyero and anthropologist Sofía Servián detail the diverse and often precarious strategies that Argentina's urban poor rely on to survive. Blending three years of ethnographic fieldwork and anthropological theory with personal narratives of Servián's experience growing up and living in a squatter settlement, the authors examine how Argentina's squatter communities contend with violence and secure necessities like food, land, and housing despite inadequate state support and protection. Auyero and Servián recount the bricolage of tactics these individuals employ to make ends meet, such as relying on highly exploitative jobs, patronage, and networks of reciprocal exchange that can involve illicit activities. Analyzing how these survival strategies intersect with class, gender, and political domination, the authors present a nuanced account of marginality in Argentinian squatter settlements while maintaining a deeply human portrait of survival and persistence.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Explicating Subsistence at the Margins
• 2. Collective Action and Party Politics in the Makings of a Squatter Settlement
• 3. Persistence Strategies
• 4. Brokers and Their Followers
• 5. Lives at Risk: How Do Residents Experience, Explain, and Deal with Interpersonal Violence?
• 6. Victims and Perpetrators
• 7. The State of Violence, the Violence of the State
• 8. Women at Work: The Social Life of a Community Center
• 9. How Does Marginality Feel?
• Conclusions
• Notes
• References
• Index