When All They Thought Was Solid Melted into Air: Resisting Pauperization in Argentina during the 2002 Crisis

Abstract

This article examines the actions that millions of new-poor Argentine citi- zens took when confronted with impoverishment during the country's economic crisis in 2002. Drawing on World Bank and Latinobarometro survey data, it explores how their distinct understandings of citizenship; their possession of human, social, physi- cal, cultural, and fi nancial capital; and aspects of their middle-class identity shaped the very specifi c forms of resistance that they adopted compared to the structural poor. It provides insights into why some citizens perceived their hardship as a political problem, formed collective grievances, and manifested their resistance through protest, while oth- ers located the causes of hardship in their own defi ciencies and tended to confi ne their responses to individual self-improvement strategies. It also fi nds that differences in per- sonal biographies, experiences of poverty, and the changing spaces available to protest infl uenced individuals' choice of action. One of the most sobering legacies of three decades of neoliberalism in Latin America has been the exposure of a signifi cant proportion of its middle class to vulnerability and impoverishment. Yet since the conceptualization of new pov- erty in the early 1990s, these studies have almost exclusively focused on how such citizens and households deal with dramatic declines in material well-being in terms of their private self-improvement responses to external shocks. Research has approached these coping strategies from an array of disciplinary perspec- tives including analyses of psychological (Masseroni and Sauane 2002), cultural and civic (Minujin 2008), and consumer-based responses (Zurawicki and Braidot 2005). Others have examined the comparative advantages in terms of gaining work or pursuing self-employment opportunities that the new poor enjoy over the structurally poor (the long-term impoverished who possess few resources and little political or social power) due to their prior accumulation of superior social and cultural capital (Feijoo 2003). Notable studies have identifi ed distinctive new- poor responses to government social policies (Aguirre 2008), and counterrational behaviors in seeking symbolic capital to preserve their class identity and loss of status (Kessler and Di Virgilio 2008; Ozarow 2008). Yet in this body of work, the political dimension of pauperization and how it is resisted by the middle class through collective behavior and protest actions (especially during periods of eco- My gratitude is due to Leandro Sepulveda, Richard Croucher, and Sarah Bradshaw for their assis- tance with this article; to Middlesex University Business School for funding this research; and to the three anonymous LARR reviewers for their helpful comments. All errors that remain are the author's responsibility.