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Asentamientos and Cantegriles: New Poverty and the Moral Dangers of Proximity in Uruguayan Squatter Settlements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Julienne Corboz
Julienne Corboz*
Affiliation:
La Trobe University
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Abstract

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This article analyzes new forms of distinction and inequality generated within Uruguayan squatter settlements as a result of neoliberal policies, class polarization, and the downward mobility of previously integrated populations that have migrated to the informal urban periphery. Based on ethnographic research in Montevideo, this article shows how newly impoverished Uruguayans have dealt with their new spatial proximity and ever-increasing socioeconomic proximity to chronic poverty through the maintenance of symbolic boundaries between themselves and the chronic poor. This boundary work is dependent on the reproduction of a series of moral oppositions, highly reminiscent of hegemonic discourses on the culture of poverty, which cast the chronic poor as dirty, lacking in values, apathetic, disorganized, and responsible for their own poverty.

Resumo

Resumo

Este artículo analiza nuevas formas de distinción y desigualdad generadas dentro de los asentamientos irregulares uruguayos, resultantes de las políticas neoliberales, la polarización de la clase social, y el descenso en la escala social que poblaciones anteriormente integradas han experimentado al emigrar a la periferia urbana informal. Basado en una investigación etnográfica hecha en Montevideo, este artículo muestra cómo los nuevos pobres uruguayos han confrontado su nueva proximidad espacial, y cada vez mayor proximidad socioeconómica, a la pobreza crónica, a través del mantenimiento de los límites simbólicos entres sí mismos y los pobres crónicos. Esta distinción depende de la reproducción de una serie de oposiciones morales que aparecen como discursos hegemónicos de la cultura de la pobreza, que clasifican a los pobres crónicos como sucios, faltos de valores, apáticos, desorganizados, y responsables por su propia pobreza.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , 2013 , pp. 44 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by the Latin American Studies Association

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