The Right to Dignity - Housing Struggles, City Making, and Citizenship in Urban Chile

In the poorest neighborhoods of Santiago, Chile, low-income residents known as pobladores have long lived at the margins-and have long advocated for the right to housing as part of la vida digna (a life with dignity). From 2011 to 2015, anthropologist Miguel P-z conducted fieldwork among the pobladores of Santiago, where the urban dwellers and activists he met were part of an emerging social movement that demanded dignified living conditions, the right to remain in their neighborhoods of origin, and, more broadly, recognition as citizens entitled to basic rights. This ethnographic account raises questions about state policies that conceptualize housing as a commodity rather than a right, and how poor urban dwellers seek recognition and articulate political agency against the backdrop of neoliberal policies.

By scrutinizing how Chilean pobladores constitute themselves as political subjects, this book reveals the mechanisms through which housing activ