Palgrave Macmillan
Peripheral Citizenship: Autoconstruction and Migration in Santiago, Chile
Miguel Pérez & Cristóbal Palma
Chapter
First Online: 01 January 2022
55 Accesses

Part of the Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology book series (PSUA)

Abstract
In cities across the Global South, poor people’s demands for housing have resulted in widespread processes of “autoconstruction.” This concept alludes to a mode of producing the urban peripheries in which residents, in building themselves their residential spaces, turned into citizen city-makers. What happens, however, when the agents of autoconstruction are immigrants who, while demanding housing, claim also their recognition as citizens? This chapter addresses that question by examining the case of the Campamento Nueva Esperanza, a squatter settlement in the peripheries of Santiago, Chile built mostly by immigrants. We show that, to constitute themselves as citizens, immigrants formulate an “urban” type of citizenship in which the act of residing in the city becomes the main criteria for political membership. In such a process, they configure ethical and political narratives through which they make sense of their desires for incorporation and belonging to the national political community.