Fuegian women housing path and experiences in slums (2006-2021)

Abstract

The self-produced habitat is one of the visible patterns that generates marks on Latin-American cities. At the same time, it explains much of the processes of urban expansion. In this sense, inhabitants assumed organizational forms and ways to access a place in the city. After this, the State develops a process of urbanization or “re-urbanization”, according to its positions around the provision of services, housing construction and urban collective equipment building. In the case of the Fuegian cities of Rio Grande and Ushuaia, the slums -also called informal settlements- were located mostly in peripheral areas since 2005. In some cases, urbanization was difficult to develop given the geographical characteristics of the land.

From a qualitative strategy, the aim of this work is to retrieve housing experiences of resident women from two Fuegian slums which emerged between 2006 and 2007. For that purpose, we focus on a) their housing trajectories into the city, b) the dynamics of urban living related with the centralities and c) their neighborhood’s visions and the relationship with the State strategies. We identified common tendencies between these two neighborhoods, attempting that urban experiences and trajectories allow us to develop differential interpretations that contribute to the debates about the housing self-production processes and the state’s role in promoting urban public policies in slums.