Abstract

Intermediate cities in the Chilean North that attract migrant/immigrant population, experience an explosive increase in informal settlements in their peripheries, which are a response to extensive processes of real estate speculation, increase in rental and sublet values, displacement in the face of an abusive, deregulated, and racist housing and land market. Under these conditions, this article analyzes the relationship between gentrification and immigration, considering the immigration and housing crisis that the country has been facing for at least three years. The discussion includes 84 in-depth interviews applied in the intermediate cities of Iquique and Antofagasta, also including interviews with key actors. The relationship between gentrification and immigration reveals a public policy gap associated with at least four interrelated dimensions: (i) restriction, denial or limitation of access to housing in central areas; (ii) pirate urbanization and exclusive housing market; (iii) construction of housing programs and/or policies that diminish the political agency of the most vulnerable; and, (iv) consolidation of self-constructed precarious settlements as a strategy of survival, resistance, waiting and/or change.