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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Daniel Ozarow
Daniel Ozarow*
Affiliation:
Middlesex University Business School
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Abstract

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This article examines the actions that millions of new-poor Argentine citizens took when confronted with impoverishment during the country's economic crisis in 2002. Drawing on World Bank and Latinobarómetro survey data, it explores how their distinct understandings of citizenship; their possession of human, social, physical, cultural, and financial capital; and aspects of their middle-class identity shaped the very specific 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 others located the causes of hardship in their own deficiencies and tended to confine their responses to individual self-improvement strategies. It also finds that differences in personal biographies, experiences of poverty, and the changing spaces available to protest influenced individuals' choice of action.

Resumen

Resumen

Este artículo examina las acciones que millones de “nuevos pobres” argentinos llevaron a cabo para hacerle frente al empobrecimiento sufrido durante la crisis económica Argentina de 2002. Basado en los resultados de dos estudios realizados por el Banco Mundial y el Latinobarómetro, este artículo analiza cómo las diferentes nociones de ciudadanía, la posesión de ciertas formas de capital humano, social y financiero y su identidad de clase media influyeron en las formas específicas de resistencia adoptadas por los ‘nuevos pobres’ en relación a aquellas adoptadas por los “pobres estructurales”. El artículo evalúa en profundidad las razones por las cuales algunos “nuevos pobres” percibieron sus propios problemas como un problema de orden político e implementaron respuestas colectivas y de protesta para manifestar su resistencia a la situación de empobrecimiento, mientras que otros lo asumieron como un problema de carencias personales y tendieron a centrar sus respuestas en la imple-mentación de estrategias de mejora individual. El estudio finalmente sostiene que las diferencias observadas entre sus biografías personales, sus experiencias de pobreza y los espacios diacrónicos abiertos para la protesta también influyeron en la selección de estrategias de acción a nivel individual.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , 2014 , pp. 178 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

My gratitude is due to Leandro Sepulveda, Richard Croucher, and Sarah Bradshaw for their assistance 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.

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