Abstract

Housing informality has reemerged in Chile’s major cities, with a dramatic increase on the number of families living in peripheral “campamentos” (informal settle-ments) over the last years. Using archival materials and interviews, in this article we analyze one of the main aspects of housing informality: self-construction. Unlike dominant literature on self-construction which put an emphasis on the objects that are produced through it, we aim to offer a perspective that seeks to understand the types of subjectivity and intersubjectivity that emerge through self-construction. We conclude that self-construction is not only a means to solve poor people’s housing needs, but also a mode of urban agency that fosters the emergence of two converging phenomena: on one hand, the appear-ance of political subjectivities among the working classes; and, on the other, the constitution of situated forms of intersubjective recognition among self-constructors. © 2024, Revista de Geografia Norte Grande. All rights reserved.