Popular settlements in Buenos Aires metropolitan region: Emergence and reproduction of the territory in the city's neoliberal production processes [1980-2010]

Abstract

This paper aims at introducing some argumentative lines of work on the territoriality acquired by popular settlements in Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region (BAMR) as a distinctive form of informal urbanization throughout itshistory (1980- 2010). First of all, the concept of territory is problematized and rescued as an element that explains the urban social reality. Second, we ask ourselves why popular settlements spring up in the BAMR, and we argue for the need to seeboth the transformations of Argentina's social aspect and the distinctive ways in which the state is present in the urban periphery as key elements to understand the emergence of what we call excluding Neoliberal territoriality. Finally, we look into the settlements' internal reproduction dynamics: the actors' historical transformations and the dispute over the social relations that define them.