Squatter Life

Sociologist Javier Auyero and anthropologist Sofía Servián detail the diverse and often precarious strategies that Argentina’s urban poor rely on to survive, showing how they contend with violence and secure necessities like food, land, and housing despite inadequate state support and protection.

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In Squatter Life, sociologist Javier Auyero and anthropologist Sofía Servián detail the diverse and often precarious strategies that Argentina’s urban poor rely on to survive. Blending three years of ethnographic fieldwork and anthropological theory with personal narratives of Servián’s experience growing up and living in a squatter settlement, the authors examine how Argentina’s squatter communities contend with violence and secure necessities like food, land, and housing despite inadequate state support and protection. Auyero and Servián recount the bricolage of tactics these individuals employ to make ends meet such as relying on highly exploitative jobs, patronage, and networks of reciprocal exchange that can involve illicit activities. Analyzing how these survival strategies intersect with class, gender, and political domination, the authors present a nuanced account of marginality in Argentinian squatter settlements while maintaining a deeply human portrait of survival and persistence.