Abstract

This article examines dynamics of conviviality and care deployed in diverse urban areas in contexts of crisis. Based on an ethnographic study that included observation, interviews, and photovoice techniques, and emphasizing the experiences of migrant women residing in Gran Yungay (Santiago, Chile), dynamics of solidarity, mutual aid, and support (contención) deployed during the COVID-19 health crisis were identified. With the notion of neighboring care (cuidados vecinales) — an alternative to that of “community care” more commonly used—, I propose to look at care not only as self-managed dynamics of the sustenance of life that go beyond the private sphere. Neighboring care is a process of collectivization and spatialization of care that can also be based on transitory, diffuse, and even virtual ties, without necessarily involving organization by affinity. Observing care through “the neighborhing” (lo vecinal), and in the midst of shared critical moments, illuminates the dynamism and heterogeneity of the social ties established by migrants in the city. At the same time, it reminds us that increasingly heterogeneous and uncertain contexts do not simply promote fragmentation and conflict. As part of a collective experience, contexts of growing uncertainty and social diversification can also give rise to processes of disarticulation and (re)articulation of “the common”.