Abstract

This article explores the processes by which a home is unmade, problematizing how the neoliberal colonial-patriarchal order crosses bodies and territories, producing discomfort, privatizing rights and desires. This article presents the stories of women who were taken by surprise by the uninhabitability of their homes due to an erratic housing policy after the eruption of the Chaitén volcano. Two trajectories were explored through qualitative methodological strategies: Those who returned to Chaitén, and those who settled in Puerto Montt. The results reveal the processes of undoing a home as a dynamic movement that includes diverse expressions, tensions, and traversals: For those who return, the aim is to restore a bond, based on stories of relief and freedom, which are tensioned when intertwined with the restrictions of uncertainty and housing precarity. Their return is a need anchored in the suffering of a home that could not be unmade. For those who do not return, the experience of tension is processed by resisting, from an insistence on complying with an imposed scheme, producing a permanence that configures a melancholic feeling. Alternatives for recuperation are discussed, taking as a horizon the socio-ecological interdependence and the place of the State in guaranteeing conditions of dignity. © 2023, Universidad de Chile, Instituto de la Vivienda. All rights reserved.