Abstract

Housing informality has reemerged in Chile's major cities, with a dramatic increase on the number of families living in peripheral campamentos (informal settlements) 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 appearance of political subjectivities among the working classes; and, on the other, the constitution of situated forms of intersubjective recognition among self-constructors.