This paper studies the spatial deployment of temporary settlements in Extremadura in 1932-1933 and 1936. The literature has stressed the role of bottom-up forces driving settlements in 1933 and 1936, perhaps making land reform in Extremadura an interesting case study of local collective action-driving policy implementation in a developing economy. Contrary to this view, we argue that there was an equal or more important role of the top-down, programmatic design of land occupations, which explains a large share of the spatial and temporal variation of expropriations and settlements.

Cohabitation is a distinctive feature of low-income groups in Latin America. In the past, it has been linked to colonial legacies including notions of familial honour, poverty, and a kinship system focused on blood ties. By contrast, some scholars consider rising levels of cohabitation in the present day to be an effect of modernisation, through increased gender equality. The present research, based on life histories of young, poor, urban co-habitees in Chile, aims to show that rising cohabitation is linked to targeted social policies and also to declining patriarchy, which is distinct from gender equality.