Squatter Life

Javier Auyero is Lozano Long Professor in Latin American Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and Ikerbasque Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao. He is the author of Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina, Contentious Lives: Two Argentine Women, Two Protests, and the Quest for Recognition, and Poor People’s Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita, all also published by Duke University Press.SofÍa ServiÁn is a BA (Licenciatura) student of anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires.

“Through rich ethnographic work in which they peel off the layers of everyday encounters, Javier Auyero and SofÍa ServiÁn reveal the multiple, ambivalent, and complex informal ties that undergird life at the urban margins. Squatter Life will appeal to all those interested in the everyday life of the poor in Latin America and larger questions about the intersection of poverty, violence, and social relations in urban geographies across time and space.” - Cecilia Menjívar, author of (Enduring Violence: Ladina Women's Lives in Guatemala) “I devoured this book. As Javier Auyero and SofÍa ServiÁn show, the daily struggle for land, shelter, food, and a minimum of physical security is always political: It entails engagement with the state and politicians and requires multiple forms of collective action. Because such engagement is informal and even illicit, political scientists like me often ignore it. But anyone seeking to understand poor people’s politics in Latin America must grapple with it. All those interested in contemporary Latin America should read this beautifully written book.” - Steven Levitsky, coauthor of (How Democracies Die)

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Explicating Subsistence at the Margins2. Collective Action and Party Politics in the Makings of a Squatter Settlement3. Persistence Strategies4. Brokers and Their Followers5. Lives at Risk: How Do Residents Experience, Explain, and Deal with Interpersonal Violence6. Victims and Perpetrators7. The State of Violence, the Violence of the State8. Women at Work: The Social Life of a Community Center9. How Does Marginality Feel?ConclusionsNotesBibliographyIndex