Residents' collective strategies of resistance in Global South cities' informal settlements: Space, scale and knowledge

Abstract

This paper examines the strategies of resistance articulated by residents of informal settlements response to urban exclusion. Building upon resistance and urban social movements literature the paper is informed by the case of the Villa Rodrigo Bueno in Buenos Aires, a self-constructed villa miseria, and its residents' stories of resistance to attempts of evictions and upgrading programs. In the paper we show how resistance is mobilized, first through its simultaneous disconnection, due to its remoteness and isolation; and reconnection to local and global supportive networks. While disconnection facilitated self-construction, densification and the blooming of informal entrepreneurship; reconnection through relational and multiscalar sites enabled unexpected encounters with distant actors that contributed to resist evictions. Second, the long-term learning and development of self-knowledge (i.e. construction, or housing law), embedded in the remoteness of the informal settlement, contributed to shift expertise from city officers to residents; redefining the role of informal residents into active citizens and experts in policy making, and turning informal settlements into settings of wider social change.