Salcedo, Rodrigo y Alejandra Rasse - The Heterogeneous Nature of Urban Poor Families

The Heterogeneous Nature of Urban Poor FamiliesRodrigo Salcedo and Alejandra RasseUniversidad Catolica del Maule

This paper addresses the scholarly debate on cultural homogeneity or heterogeneityof urban poor families. While authors such as Lewis (1959) or Wacquant (2000;2001) claim that structural disadvantages are linked to a particular type of identityor culture, others such as Hannerz (1969), Anderson (1999; 2002), or Portes (Portesand Manning, 1986; Portes and Jensen, 1989) believe that it is possible to find dif-ferent behaviors, expectations, decision-making processes, and outcomes amongpeople living in seemingly identical structural conditions (Small et al., 2010). UsingSantiago, Chile, as a case study, we differentiate five different cultures or identitiesamong the poor. Those identities seem to be the product of different historical andpolitical circumstances, as well as of different types of public policies. The paperends with a discussion of the need for poverty reduction policies to consider thesedifferences among the poor.

INTRODUCTION

Scholars working on poverty in the United States have been divided over the years be-tween those who believe the poor are a culturally homogeneous group (Lewis, 1959, 1966;Wacquant, 2000, 2001), and those who claim it is possible to distinguish sub-cultures evenin the most marginalized areas (Hannerz, 1969; Portes and Manning, 1986; Portes andJensen, 1989; Anderson, 1990, 1999; Small et al. 2010). In Chile, the same debate can beobserved. While some authors (Vekemans et al., 1969; Castells, 1973; SUR, 1987a, 1987b)argue that the poor are a homogeneous group, others (Portes, 1971; Vandershueren,1971; Sabatini, 1995; Martnez and Palacios, 1996; Marquez, 2002; 2003; 2004; Salcedoet al., 2009; Fundacion para la Superacion de la Pobreza, 2010) argue in favor of the ideaof the poor as culturally diverse.Using qualitative data collected in the past five years, and taking the city of Santiago as

a case study, this paper proposes a five-fold cultural typology of the urban poor. Drawingupon previous classifications of the poor, the typology is based upon three variables: therepertoire of available strategies for social integration, narratives of upward social mo-bility, and narratives regarding future expectations. Based on the typology, it is arguedthat the various sub cultures identified are linked to different historical and political

Correspondence should be addressed to Rodrigo Salcedo, Dean, College of Social and Economic Sciences,Universidad Catolica del Maule, Av. San Miguel 3605, Talca, Republica de Chile; [email protected]

City & Community 11:1 March 2012doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6040.2011.01385.xC 2012 American Sociological Association, 1430 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20005

94

HETEROGENEOUS NATURE OF URBAN POOR FAMILIES

circumstances, as well as to different cycles of poverty reduction policies and urban con-texts. This connection between structural factors and culture offers interesting possibil-ities for further comparisons between countries. In addition, it opens up an importantdebate regarding how universal a poverty reduction policy might be, and the extent towhich a policy may affect the values and expectations of beneficiaries.

THE URBAN POVERTY DEBATE IN THE UNITED STATES

For most scholars, poverty has structural roots. The economic conditions of society atlarge, as well as the ways in which different families are integrated into the system, ac-count for the disadvantaged conditions in which poor people live over generations. How-ever, since the 1960s culture has also been included either as an additional, explanatoryvariable, or as an intervening variable able to amplify or reduce the impact of structuralfactors. The main debate has concentrated on the degree to which similar structuralconditions generate a homogeneous culture among the poor; or to the contrary, if differ-ences and sub-cultures can be found.The first to speak of the poor as a culturally homogeneous group was Oscar Lewis.

Lewiss (1959; 1966) culture of poverty perspective maintains that people living inpoverty develop values, attitudes, and behaviors that are different from those of the restof the population. For Lewis, such differences represent a cultural strategy used to face ahistory of personal and collective failures and the lack of opportunities experienced ona daily basis. While attitudes such as pessimism and hopelessness may help individuals todeal with the frustrations stemming from an unequal society, at the same time they makepoor families more prone to social maladies such as teenage pregnancy or dropping outof school. In our study of Santiago, we find some but not all of the poor are fatalistic,pessimistic, or unhopeful.Lewis work, and the culture of poverty approach as a whole, was highly criticized.

The idea of a culture of poverty was equated with cultural determinism, and made itpossible for conservatives to lay the blame on the poor for their condition (Small et al.,2010). Different authors in the 1990s and 2000s have taken some of the points made byLewis and applied them not to the poor as a whole, but rather to the African Americanghettos of the large American metropolis.Wilson (1987, 1996), for example, argued that poverty is accentuated by cultural and

spatial factors that stem from structural conditions. He believed that the ultimate causefor the formation of the contemporary African American ghetto was the transformationof the industrial economy into a service economy. Such a model makes employment ofthe uneducated more precarious and reduces the number of available jobs. In addition,the departure of African Americanmiddle class families from the ghetto eliminated socialdiversity and reduced the possibility for ghetto youth to find successful role models. Thesefactors led to a change in the values and attitudes of poor African Americans, in additionto dismantling traditional families and making gang life or the drug economy a valuable(and probably the only) model for economic success within the ghetto. Since it is difficultfor most poor families to leave the ghetto, spatial enclosure consolidates and naturalizesthe structural conditions.

95

CITY & COMMUNITY

Wacquant (2000, 2001, 2007) describes American ghettos as (1) compulsory spacesthe inhabitants are unable to leave; (2) neighborhoods in which economic exclusion,territorial stigmas, and the drug economy are combined, generating a vicious cycle ofviolence; and (3) spaces in which the State is present only through repressive policies,abandoning any protective or service-providing role. In these neighborhoods, Wacquant(2000, 2001) argues, the poor become a homogeneous group that differs in their valuesand behaviors from the rest of society. He explicitly links State public policies (or the lackof them) with a particular cultural identity, one that is similar to that described by Lewis(1959, 1966).On the other side of the culture of poverty argument are those authors who believe

that even within identical structural living conditions, cultural differences may arise. Forexample, scholars who have underlined this kind of diversity analyze immigrant enclaves.Even though urban areas in which immigrants live can be statistically characterized asareas of concentrated poverty, the daily living conditions in these areas are completelydifferent from those described in the ghetto. According to Portes and Manning (1986),immigrant enclaves are territories in which it is possible to obtain work contacts and toestablish small, informal businesses. In sum, such enclaves generate fertile space for in-formal social networking and markets and for the appearance of an entrepreneurialminority (Portes and Jensen, 1989). Moreover, Portes et al. (2002) discuss the transna-tional character of this entrepreneurial minority which emerges from the mobilizationof resources in both the receiving country and the country of origin.Without denying the existence of an entrepreneurial minority in territories where im-

migrants are over-represented, Waldinger (1989) questions the idea that self-employmentand networks arise solely from the ethnic solidarity networks that residents build. Accord-ing to this author, the development of ethnic businesses is linked to a broader complexof interacting factors (p. 69), including cultural predispositions in certain immigrantgroups, the opportunity structure of the territories that they inhabit, or the percentageof residents with the same ethnic background living in the area.From a different perspective, Young (2007) has also criticized the idea of the poor as

a homogeneous group. He argues that the border between exclusion and integration isnot as clear as most studies show. In reality there are continuities, such as families andgroups moving from exclusion to integration and vice versa. Small (2007) adds to thecritique, arguing that since there are differences between neighborhoods in terms ofaccess to resources, transportation, gang penetration, police presence, and other condi-tions, it is very difficult to consider all such neighborhoods as homogeneous ghettos.Moreover, Small et al. (2010) acknowledge the fact that there is significant variationin behavior, decision-making and outcomes among people living in seemingly identicalstructural conditions (p. 4).While recent literature acknowledges heterogeneity of the poor and some typologies

distinguish specific logics of action (Fosse, 2010), there have been very few attempts atgenerating descriptions of the multiple cultures that coexist in poor neighborhoods. Thefew exceptions are the classic Hannerz (1969) study, which argues that a ghetto cultureand a mainstream culture coexist in impoverished areas, and Anderson (1999), whodistinguished between a decent culture (similar to what is considered mainstreamculture) and a street culture. Anderson (2002) also argues that both cultures act ascodes for public behavior, and thus it is common for the same individual resident to

96


move from one to the other according to specific circumstances, in a practice known ascode-switching.

URBAN POVERTY DEBATE IN CHILE (19702010)

Like their U.S. counterparts, Chilean scholars have also been divided since the late 1960sbetween those who see the poor as a homogeneous group and those who argue thatthe poor are culturally heterogeneous. This debate has been related to the political andpolicy developments within Chile and, though it is hard to generalize, in the rest of LatinAmerica as well.The debate on poverty during the late 1960s and early 1970s emerged in the context

of the Cold War. While the Kennedy and Johnson administrations encouraged variouscountries to enact structural reforms within the capitalist framework, several leftist gov-ernments throughout the continent attempted revolutionary transformations. All of thelatter governments were, in the end, overthrown and replaced in the mid 1970s by U.S.supported military dictatorships.In terms of poverty reduction policies in Chile, both the Frei (19641970) and Allende

(19701973) governments encouraged social organizing, and favored the organized pooras social policy beneficiaries. While housing for the poor was provided to individual fam-ilies as private property, most of these families were part of organized groups that seizedprivate lands on the outskirts of the city.Among those Chilean scholars who viewed the poor as a homogeneous group, there

was a clear distinction between those for whom the poor were a highly apathetic and de-pendent group, along the same lines as the culture of poverty theorists, and others forwhom the poor were a well-organized group with a clear class-consciousness. An exampleof the former group is Vekemans et al. (1969), who conceptualized the Chilean urbanpoor as a marginalized group unable to create their own organizations and the neces-sary conditions for upward social mobility. An example of the latter is Castells (1973),who argued that the structural conditions of Chilean society had created the possibil-ity for the organization and social cohesion of the poor, as well as for the appearanceof a clear class-consciousness. While the former authors were ideologically linked to theChilean Christian Democratic Party, a centrist and reformist party committed to Presi-dent Kennedys Alliance for Progress and the Frei administration, Castells, who arrivedin Chile in the early 1970s, immediately became involved with the leftist project of theAllende government.Differences also existed among those who saw the poor in Chile as a heterogeneous

group, but their classifications tended to reflect a political agenda. Portes (1971) pro-duced the first typology of urban poor families, distinguishing between slum culture andthat of the squatter settlements. While slum residents conform to the culture of povertyparadigm, and are thus disorganized and fatalistic, those who have organized to seize landand live in illegal settlements tend to form solidarity networks and social capital. Gener-ating a different typology from a distinctly Marxist perspective, Vandershueren (1971)maintained that the different positions the Chilean urban poor occupy in the produc-tive process, along with their income levels, divide them into four distinguishable groups:(1) low-income formal workers, (2) well-paid and either unionized or territorially orga-nized workers, (3) the lumpen proletariat defined as low-income informal workers, and

97

CITY & COMMUNITY

(4) workers in the informal economy who receive higher salaries than the rest. Clearlyconveying the authors own political commitment, both typologies make a clear distinc-tion between the culture of those poor people who are organized or politically involvedwith more possibilities of overcoming poverty, and the culture of the isolated or politicallyuncommitted poor.In 1973, a military coup overthrew President Allendes democratically elected gov-

ernment, replacing it with a right wing dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet(19731990). The organized poor were no longer a political actor. Neoliberal reformschanged public policies dramatically. Education, housing, or healthcare were no longersocial rights, and became merely commodities to be individually bought and sold in thefree market. For example, housing policies since 1980 had been based on a demand sidesubsidy (voucher) that allows a poor family to purchase a house in the private market,complementing initial savings and the voucher with a State-insured bank loan. The con-struction process, and the way in which the neighborhood is shaped, fell completely intoprivate hands. In addition, the determination of which residents will live in the neigh-borhood ends up being completely random, with no consideration of previously existingsocial networks.Throughout the dictatorship, the common view of scholars both on the left and on

the right was that the poor were a culturally homogeneous group. Scholars on the politicalleft who were not killed or exiled were at least displaced from traditional educational in-stitutions. Without any influence over the countrys socio-economic transformation, theymainly joined foreign financed NGOs to research political and economic conditions. Forinstance, SUR was comprised of a group of former scholars and political activists involvedin the struggle against the dictatorship. Their journal Proposiciones (Propositions) de-scribed the urban poor as a group that had been negatively affected by the dictatorshipsneoliberal policies, but whose struggle and organizational capacities had made them ableto resist and confront the hardships in their lives (e.g., SUR Proposiciones No 13; SURProposiciones No 14, etc.). On the other side of the political spectrum, policy makersworking for the Pinochet regime (1) did not understand the poor as a social group, butrather as individuals in need; and (2) viewed all these individuals as disorganized, apa-thetic, and dependent on the state.As with most other Latin American countries that had been immersed in dictatorships,

Chile returned to democracy in 1990. In 1989, the Chilean dictatorship was defeated in aplebiscite and democratic elections were held. From 1990 to 2009, the government was inthe hands of the Concertacion de Partidos por la Democracia, a left-of-center allianceof Christian Democrats, Socialists, and various Social Democratic and SocialLiberalgroups. While some minor changes were enacted, and public spending on social goodswas dramatically increased, the fundamental neoliberal reforms were left untouched.Throughout this period, most urban scholarship was devoted to the analysis and ques-tioning of the effects of Chilean demand-side housing policies (e.g., Ducci, 2000; Sabatiniet al., 2001; Skewes, 2001; Tironi, 2003; Rodrguez and Sugranyes, 2005, etc.). Very littleattention was devoted to the everyday lives of the poor, their values, expectations, or theirpossible cultural differences.Today almost every Chilean poverty scholar agrees that the poor are heterogeneous.While

many scholars have correctly made distinctions or described some group among thepoor, they have either missed or denied the existence of other culturally different groupsor not considered those groups in their analysis. Some analysts of Chilean poverty use

98


classifications that greatly resemble those of Hannerz (1969) or Anderson (1999). For ex-ample, Martnez and Palacios (1996) discuss a cultural fissure among the poor borrowingAndersons (1999) categories. They maintain that while there are traces of a culture ofpoverty among the poor, a new culture of decency is also appearing that is culturallyindividualistic and oriented towards work and social mobility.Our study draws upon a central distinction between the individualistic and collectivis-

tic poor. Sabatini (1995) has argued that among the female urban poor there are twoantagonistic cultural tendencies. On the one hand, there is a heavy degree of individual-ism, which has a demobilizing and isolating effect. On the other hand, there is a strongsense of community that pushes them towards collective action. While the descriptionof the organized poor and their cultural and psychological motivations are similar tothose developed in the 1970s and 1980s, the individualistic poor appears to replace theapathetic and dependent poor found in past scholarship.This tension between individualism and collective action appears in our own previous

work (Salcedo et al. 2009; Salcedo 2010). We argue that traditional lower-class culture(with strong family ties and the existence of nonfunctional networks) is being replacedby a culture of individualism (lack of community control over territory, privatization ofeveryday life, and appearance of symbols of status and differentiation). These culturesgive rise to different projects for social mobility.Studies by Marquez (2002; 2003; 2004) of neighborhood identities emphasize both the

tension between individualistic and communitarian tendencies (2003), as well as the vari-ety of integration strategies that poor families use and accept in complex societies (2004).As Robert Merton (1938) long ago noted, integration strategies are not restricted to so-cially accepted or socially legitimized pathways (work, education, consumption, etc.),but also include alternatives such as crime or passive participation in the drug econ-omy. Families combinations of different strategies tend to be related to the sources ofsymbolic or material support in their integration projects. Among those institutions sup-porting integration are the local and national State, the formal economic system, andinformal economic networks including both legal small commerce and production andillegal activities.The Fundacion para la superacion de la pobreza (2010) developed a similar three-way

categorization of urban poor families as dependent, hard working, and counter-cultural.Unfortunately, this NGO report does not situate the findings in the context of the largerdebate on poverty, making it difficult to interpret the results, but we shall draw upon thiscategory of dependent poverty.In addition to individualistic and collectivist mobility projects of the poor, current Latin

American debates on urban poverty emphasize the spatial structure of opportunities.Sabatini and colleagues (2006; Sabatini and Salcedo, 2007) have argued that the local-ization of the poor in the city generates cultural and lifestyle differences among them.They distinguish between poor households living in segregated poor areas and those inareas in which wealthy or middle class residents are arriving, attracting local opportuni-ties that may change the daily life and economic situations of the poorest neighbors. Incontrast, segregated areas cannot attract opportunities such as commerce, services, andjobs and slowly deteriorate in both social and urban terms.In this paper, we also contend that the cultural differences found among the poor

and thus the typology we generate are related to different urban dynamics. The mate-rial and symbolic opportunities available in different locations, the segregation pattern

99

CITY & COMMUNITY

of the city, as well as the impact of housing policies aimed at creating a class of poorproprietors, have had an impact on how families experience their everyday life, theirstrategies, their perception of self-efficacy, and the way they make decisions. Residentialsegregation of neighborhoods, schools and workplaces contribute to the social isolationof the poor and sap their social capital, diminishing opportunities and weakening theirpublic voice (Kaztman 2001). The degree to which different poor families experiencethese types of spatial segmentation has a differential effect on their values and expecta-tions for the future, generating diversity among the urban poor. In sum, urban povertyemerges from a complex interaction between characteristics of the structure of oppor-tunities in society and each familys access to resources (Kaztman, 2001; Kaztman andRetamoso, 2006; Sarav, 2006). This perspective replaces the static notion of povertywith the more dynamic idea of vulnerability. It also argues that residing in a good lo-cation of the city is an important resource to access social opportunities and overcomeprecarious situations.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF CHILEAN SOCIETY (19902010)

The impact of Chilean policies on domestic living conditions is relevant not only forChilean scholars, but for all scholars of urban poverty. Chiles economic growth over thelast twenty years made it a model for the governments of developed countries as wellas financial institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.Chilean public policies are not only imitated throughout the world, but also criticized(Collins and Lear 1995). The most significant changes that have taken place seem to bethe following:

CHILES MATERIAL TRANSFORMATION: FROM UNDER-DEVELOPMENT TOTHE IN-BETWEEN ZONE

Starting in 1988, Chile began an impressive process of economic growth. Throughout thefollowing decades the countrys GDP per capita rose from around US$5,000 to aroundUS$14,000, and poverty was reduced from 40 percent to just 15.7 percent (INE 2010).Despite this success, inequality has remained high.Along with economic growth, the left-of-center governments of the 1990s and 2000s

were able to dramatically transform the housing stock as well as educational opportunitiesavailable to Chileans. In terms of housing, there were over 1.5 million Chileans livingin precarious or illegal settlements (roughly 10 percent of the countrys population) in1990, but today there are less than 100,000 people living in such conditions (CIS 2007).Due to governmental housing programs, 80 percent of the poor are now homeowners.This policy is being replicated in countries such as South Africa, Indonesia, Costa Rica,and Colombia (Gilbert 2002; 2004. Ferguson and Navarrete 2003).Regarding education, in the mid 1990s Chile universalized high school coverage, and

in 2000 President Ricardo Lagos declared mandatory high school attendance. In addi-tion, college education has been democratized, and access to post-secondary educationtoday is similar to that in developed countries.However, what most transformed the life experience of middle and lower in-

come families was the radical expansion of access to credit. Since the late 1980s,

100


department stores began issuing their own credit cards, an example followed in the 1990sby large supermarket chains. Today over 8 million department store credit cards havebeen issued in Chile, reaching all sectors of society, including the poor. In recent years,Chilean retail chains have exported the model of democratized credit to those countriesin which they also operate, especially Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina (Bianchi2009).

NEW VALUES AND EXPECTATIONS: FROM CULTURAL HOMOGENEITY TODIVERSITY AND CONFLICT

In the last twenty years, economic expansion dramatically increased the number of mid-dle class families. Poverty reduction generated a new aspiring middle class (Tironi1999), a group with roots, relatives, and a past based in poverty, but with middle class pur-chasing power and the capacity to access private health, education, and housing. Whilestill vulnerable to poverty, they make conscious efforts to legitimize their new middle classstatus and to differentiate themselves from the poor. This contradiction between originsand current status creates a tension between ones original identity and ones desired,recognizable status (Mendez 2009).At the same time, and following international tendencies, the elite and part of the mid-

dle class have become culturally and aesthetically more sophisticated, liberal, and fond ofglobal urban lifestyles. Some of these groups have migrated back to downtown or quasi-central areas in a process that, if not gentrifying, is at least regenerating older neighbor-hoods (Contreras 2005; Rubio 2009; Matus 2010). Along with this liberalization, therehas been a conservative reaction expressed in the growth of various conservative catholicmovements (Thumala 2008) and in the self-segregation of elite groups in traditionallyupper class areas or in gated communities located in other parts of the city (Salcedo andTorres 2004; Sabatini and Salcedo 2007).Despite the conservative reaction, Chilean society as whole has become more liberal

and individualistic. Legally, divorce has finally been accepted, and media censorship hasended. In terms of accepted social practices, the numbers of marriages and general fer-tility rates have dropped sharply since 1990, and community life and social participationin neighborhoods have either decreased or changed focus. This liberalization process isrelated to the penetration of transnational culture, via the international mass media. Pos-session of products advertised in the media becomes a symbol of social status, age, andlifestyle. Among the poor sectors, sneakers or technological gadgets are the preferredmeans of achieving such status (Salcedo et al. 2009).However, mass media have not only transmitted the hegemonic cultural codes of global

capitalist society, aimed at social integration through the market economy. In addition,it transmitted subordinate or nonlegitimate cultures and values. Particularly relevant inthe context of the Chilean urban poor is the assimilation of ethical and aesthetic valuesof the Mexican narco culture and American gangsta rap identity (Ganter 2010). Whilenot as dramatic as in other Latin American countries, throughout Santiago drug-relatedcrime and violence is on the rise. Our research found more or less formal youth gangsare taking over streets, parks, and other public spaces, spreading fear and encouragingstrategies to avoid becoming a victim of crime.

101

CITY & COMMUNITY

SPATIAL TRANSFORMATION IN CHILEAN CITIES: DECREASING DISTANCE,BUILDING WALLS

Despite an important increase in international immigration and a migration of indige-nous Mapuche groups from the south, Santiago remains highly homogeneous, with anindigenous population of only 3.2 percent, and a population of foreign-born individualsof just 3 percent (INE 2010). Social class differences determine urban identities and thepatterns of segregation related to such identities throughout the city of Santiago. Fromthe 1930s, when the elite moved out of downtown, up to the 1980s, the spatial patternof Santiago was highly segregated by class; the elite was concentrated in a cone-shapedarea starting from downtown and moving towards the northeastern periphery. The poorlived in segregated areas in the northwest and south of the city, and the middle classes,the least segregated group, occupied the central and quasi-central areas (Sabatini et al.2001). Since the end of the 1980s, elite and upper-middle class families have dispersed,reducing the scale of spatial residential segregation and increasing the number of sociallyheterogeneous areas (Sabatini and Salcedo 2007, 2010).Along with the dispersion of the elites, there has been a dispersion of such artifacts

of modernity as shopping centers, private healthcare facilities, private schools, and gasstations. The presence of such amenities makes almost any area of the city valuableand a potential destination for middle or upper-class families (Sabatini and Salcedo2007, 2010). While the dispersion of the elites has not generated any sort of com-munity integration between old (poor) and new (wealthy) residents, it has been suc-cessful in generating functional and/or market integration for the urban poor: Thereare more jobs and business opportunities available, municipal services are better, andpolice surveillance is more efficient (Salcedo and Torres 2004, Sabatini and Salcedo2007). At the same time, spatial closeness has provided the poor living in mixed ar-eas with role models to be imitated both on ethical and aesthetical levels (Salcedo andTorres 2004).But not all of the effects of elite and middle class dispersion have been positive. Since

more widespread areas have recently become desirable, there has been a substantial in-crease in land values throughout the city (Sabatini and Salcedo 2010). The only landnow available for affordable housing or government-subsidized housing projects is lo-cated either outside the city limits, or in places where the accumulation of povertyand social maladies makes it impossible for the market to transform them into attrac-tive neighborhoods for the middle class. Thus, new subsidized housing projects tend tobe concentrated in already ghettoized areas or in semi-rural zones, both totally sepa-rated from modernity and its artifacts. This trend has created two types of poor areas:those located close to the middle classes where there tends to be more opportunities,and those located far from such opportunities (Sabatini and Salcedo 2010). This dualityhas transformed the expectations of the Chilean urban poor. While 20 years ago theirdreams and struggles were based on obtaining some kind of basic housing unit, hope-fully as a homeowner, today their expectations are to move into a well-located house(Salcedo 2010).Following Chilean trends, the dispersion of elites and its socio-spatial consequences

have been observed in other Latin American cities since the late 1990s. New gatedcommunities and other housing complexes arose in traditionally lower income orsemi-rural areas in Buenos Aires, Lima, and Bogota. In general, scholarly opinions

102


regarding the process of elite dispersion in these cities has been mostly negative (e.g.,on Argentina, see Svampa 2001; Roitman 2005). For example, fear of crime and thesecurity regimes employed by the wealthy are said to perpetrate a kind of symbolic vio-lence against poorer residents that impedes the development of functional or social ties(Janoschka 2002).

METHODS

In light of these changes in social and spatial structure, the remainder of this paperpresents a qualitatively constructed typology of the urban poor in Santiago, Chile, andconsiders possible relationships between the categories obtained and different structuralconditions, historical and political circumstances, and cycles of poverty reduction poli-cies. The typology was developed through a review of data and the conclusions of severalresearch projects conducted from 2002 to 2010 at the Institute for Urban and Territo-rial Studies at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago. Much of the datawe analyze were collected in the course of the World Bank financed study of Neighbor-hoods in crisis and successful neighborhoods produced by social housing policy in Chile(20062008). This barrios study was conducted in eight social housing neighborhoodslocated in three Chilean cities (Santiago, Concepcion, and Talca) that varied by degreeof socioeconomic segregation of the poor from more affluent households. This studycollected data from a census of 1800 respondents; 16 focus groups among residents ofthe eight neighborhoods; 40 interviews with key actors (police officers, priests, nurses,community leaders, and teachers) who provided outsiders perspective on the residents;and three months of ethnographic work in three different neighborhoods (one highlysegregated, one including middle classes in the surrounding area, and one surroundedby wealthy neighbors) by three graduate students who produced more than 300 pages offield notes and more than 1000 pictures.In addition, as part of our study of The last slum: Moving from illegal settlements to

homeownership in Chile (20092010), we conducted six focus groups with people whohad been recently moved from one of the last Santiago shantytowns to subsidized housingcomplexes (in which they own the housing unit) in Penalolen Municipality, one of themost socially diverse areas in the city of Santiago (20 percent under the poverty line;20 percent elites; and the rest, middle class groups). The focus group participants wererecruited through a random sample of housing units. The focus groups were videotaped,and the conversations and discourses were qualitatively analyzed (for details, see Salcedo2010, p. 99). Finally, we draw with permission upon secondary data from the findings ofvarious M.A. theses (e.g., Garca 2007; Lunecke 2008) and one Ph.D. dissertation (Ganter2010) supervised by the authors of this study. The material from both projects is availablefrom the authors.Although none of these studies dealt specifically with a description and detailed

cultural analysis of the urban poor, they demonstrated the variety of situations of what webroadly refer to as urban poverty. Taken as a whole, these studies allowed us to comparesituations, experiences, and identities of the Santiago poor. The data were analyzed byidentifying the main cultural differences between households. First, the barrios material(from Neighborhoods in crisis) was codified through free and tree nodes (using thesoftware NVivo), creating axial codes. These axial codes were related to different issues,

103

CITY & COMMUNITY

some indicating cultural differences among the participant subjects. Reviewing thosecodes in light of the relevant national and international literature enable us to identifysuch differences. We identified three variables that were able to organize conceptu-ally the cultural differences in values, narratives, and repertoires (Small et al. 2010;p. 10):

(a) Narratives about expectations toward the future (optimistic / pessimistic), such asreported by Oscar Lewis and other scholars who talk about the fatalistic or pessimisticpoor.

(b) The repertoire of available strategies for social mobility (state dependence, natural-ization of illegalities, and effort and hard work), drawing upon the integration strate-gies in Marquez (2004).

(c) Narratives about projects for upward social mobility, relying upon Chilean scholarswho have suggested tension between a communitarian tendency and a more individ-ualistic one (Sabatini 1995; Martnez and Palacios 1996; Salcedo et al. 2009).1

These classification variables were then checked against the data from The last slumstudy and the two theses and the dissertation for applicability, reliability, and refinement.

A TYPOLOGY OF POVERTY IN CONTEMPORARY SANTIAGO,CHILE

The data showed an enormous diversity in experiences, values, expectations, and lifestylesamong the urban poor. Rather than merely describe all of these differing situations, it wasdecided to classify them into a finite number of poverty types based upon three analyticvariables: (1) the repertoire of available strategies for social integration; (2) the narrativesof poor residents regarding their projected upward social mobility; and (3) the expecta-tions they have for the future.

THE REPERTOIRE OF AVAILABLE STRATEGIES FOR SOCIAL INTEGRATION

Given labor market transformations increasing informality, sub-contracting, and self-employment, many question the idea that it is still possible to overcome poverty by work-ing in the formal (and ideally unionized) sector (see Shipler 2004). According to recentdata, over 70 percent of Chileans living under the poverty line actually work, and themajority of them do so in the formal economy (INE 2010).Today in Chile, integration into society, building a social status, and legitimizing ones

social practices and lifestyles are largely related to the consumption of certain goods andservices (from housing and plasma TV sets, to private healthcare and education). The bigquestion for the urban poor is how to access such consumption from the repertoire ofstrategies available. For some families, the only available strategy seems to be a connectionto the social protection network of the State. For others, consumption is only possiblethrough the naturalization and legitimization of illegal or semi-legal activities. Finally, fora third group, hard work and a culture of decency (Martinez and Palacios 1996) is seen

104


as the only valid strategy. These three different strategies rest upon different structures ofopportunities, imply access to different social networks, and reflect differing uses of thecity and neighborhood.

NARRATIVES OF UPWARD SOCIAL MOBILITY

In the context of upward mobility as experienced in Chile, the way of attaining suchmobility becomes a central aspect of identity. The range of discernable mobility projectsamong all interviewed families was reduced to three. There were very few families thatdid not have any discernable project. These families, the poorest of those interviewed,were completely concentrated on generating the material means necessary for their dailysurvival. They did not possess the personal capital (education, networks, etc.), the re-sources, or the time needed to be able to think ahead, make plans, or generate futurestrategies. For a second group of families, upward mobility was seen as an individual orfamily project in which the family assets and resources are mobilized without consideringcommunity needs or resources. These families considered themselves to be differentfrom their neighbors, either in terms of their willingness to sacrifice and work hard, orin terms of the cultural capital or education they possessed. Finally, for a third group offamilies, the project of upward mobility is essentially a collective one related to the com-munitys capacity for organization and participation, and to the constitution of solidaritynetworks among neighbors. Collective projects were based on the belief that all familiesin the neighborhood face the same constraints and experience the same kinds of prob-lems, and thus only organization and common struggle can help them to overcome theircurrent situation.

NARRATIVES OF EXPECTATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

One of the most defining aspects of poor families identities is the narrative they recountof their expectations for the future. The difference in expectations shows the autonomyindividuals possess in their response to the received structure of domination (MacLeod2009, p. 149). While the large majority of families today acknowledge that they are ma-terially better off than in the past, the expectations they have for the future are not ashomogeneous. We distinguish between two types of narratives: optimistic and pessimistic.The optimistic narrative states that in the future the heads of the family or their childrenwill be able to improve their material conditions and overcome poverty. The pessimisticperspective is the belief that the family will remain in its current situation, given the lackof individual or collective efficacy (Sampson 2004).When these three variables are placed in a matrix, it produces a typology of eighteen

categories of urban poor families. However, once applied to the concrete empirical data,empty cells appeared. For example, there were no collective projects among pessimisticfamilies. The data ultimately generated a classification with five types of urban poorhouseholds: organized, dependent, ghettoized, hopeless, and moyenized (as shown inTable 1).Before characterizing these five types of urban poor families, two clarifications are nec-

essary. First, any categorization is a simplified model of reality. Thus, because all familiesdisplay contradictions and confront changes over time, the five groups developed can beseen as ideal types rather than accurate representations of particular families. Second,

105

CITY & COMMUNITY

Table 1. A Typology of Poverty in Santiago, Chile

Narratives about the expectations toward the future

Optimistic Pessimistic

Narratives about the Narratives about theupward mobility project upward mobility project

No project for Individual Collective No project for Individual Collectivesocial mobility project project social mobility project project

Clientelism DependentRepertoire ofavailable Naturalization ofstrategies for illegalities Ghettoized Unhopefulsocial

Culture of decency Moyenized Organized

in some places, one of the described groups may represent the majority of residents, orconstitute the hegemonic identity, but most types of families lived in almost all the placesstudied. Thus, as Schnell and Yoav (2001) argue, different groups assign different mean-ings and uses to the spaces in which they live their daily lives and so, conflicting narrativesmay coexist in the same territory.

1. Organized poverty

Woman A: I dont know if my neighbors agree, but I think that participating was an obli-gation. There [in the informal settlement where they lived] they rang your bell and you hadto go to a meeting, to a march, whatever time it was. It was an obligation, a commitment,more than Florcita, please come to a meeting. Here we can have some free time, there wecouldnt.Woman B: There, if you didnt go to a march when it was needed, the leaders would punishyou.Woman A: They shut down your electricity . . .

Focus Group in Penalolen municipality (Salcedo 2010)

As a community we have obtained many things, public lighting; the arrival of public trans-portation . . . .

Interview in Pudahuel Municipality (Garca 2007)

In the settlement we even expelled people because they were on drugs. There were delinquents,but in general we were able to eliminate crime in the settlement.Focus Group in Penalolen municipality (Salcedo 2010)

By organized poverty, we mean the descriptions and idealizations of the urban poormade by various scholars working in Chile from the late 1960s to the 1980s (Castells 1973;Proposiciones 13 1987). These families place community organizations, usually territori-ally based, at the center of their mobility projects, and the local and national State asthe actor with which they negotiate their demands. They see the State not in paternal-istic terms (as a provider of goods in exchange for loyalty), but as the guarantor ofsocial rights. They are optimistic about the future, believing that if they work together

106


and maintain solidarity and cooperation, they will be able to overcome poverty andimprove their living conditions, especially in terms of housing, education, health, andthe provision of municipal services. In addition, many of them place a symbolic bound-ary (Lamont and Fournier 1992) between themselves and other urban poor groups: whilethey believe in hard work and solidarity, the rest are supposedly trapped either in individ-ualism or in a culture of crime. The organized poor see the collective strategies they useas instruments not just to obtain goods and services, but also to maintain their neighbor-hoods free of crime and other behaviors they find undesirable (violence against woman,alcoholism, etc.).In the city of Santiago, this type of household is concentrated in three different spa-

tial contexts. First, they live in some of the few remaining illegal or informal settlements,where community organizing is the source of internal order, the provision of services,and the possibility of obtaining subsidized housing in the future. Organization is the onlyway to satisfy both their daily needs (such as drinking water or electricity) and their long-term expectations of consumption (having a house, living in a nice neighborhood, etc.).Second, this type of poverty is found in neighborhoods once linked to organized landseizures and supported by political parties in the 1960s and 1970s. After a group of fam-ilies seized the land, there were different governmental programs aimed at regularizingthe property, either building a housing unit for the group or supporting these families inthe process of building their own homes. The mutual support among community mem-bers during the land seizure and self-construction, the solidarity networks generated toconfront poverty, unemployment, and repression during the military regime, and in cer-tain cases the organization of neighbors to oppose NIMBYs or changes in municipal zon-ing codes in more recent years, have all allowed residents to maintain a collective identityand an organizational capacity. In some emblematic cases, neighbors have created groupsaimed at preserving the history and identity of the neighborhood through publications,mural paintings, radio or TV programs, and other such activities (e.g., Grupo identidady memoria popular 2008). Today these neighborhoods are inhabited by older residentsalong with their children who have been unable to obtain a house elsewhere. However,organizing (and especially organizational leadership) is mostly restricted to the older,original members of the community. The fact that the organized poor and its leadershipare adults in their 50s or 60s is a clear sign that this group, if not disappearing, is at leastdeclining in Chile. Finally, some organized urban poor families are scattered throughoutthe city, but participate in trans-local organizations such as ANDHA Chile (National Asso-ciation of Subsidized Housing Debtors), which collectively seeks the cancellation of theirmortgage debts and generates solidarity networks that serve other needs in the process.We hypothesize that the diminished relevance of organizing and other collective strate-

gies for social mobility and thus the reduction in numbers of the organized poor isrelated to four different factors: (1) the shift in public policy orientations, from thoseof the 1960s and early 1970s that valued organization and the creation of social net-works, to those enacted from the 1980s and beyond, which are individually based; (2)the socio-cultural transformation of Chilean society towards more individualistic valuesand privatized daily life (Salcedo 2010); (3) the significant improvements in the qualityof life of the urban poor during the past two decades, which has decreased the need forsolidarity and common struggles; and (4) the lack of collective efficacy regarding tra-ditional organizations (Sampson 2004) such as Juntas de Vecinos, the legal name forneighborhood associations.

107

CITY & COMMUNITY

2. Dependent poverty

People living in this building come from a shantytown, and generally everything is given toshantytown people. The municipality and the government give them stuff and they are notused to spending money out of their pockets. . .

Interview in Concepcion Municipality (Sabatini, Salcedo, and Wormald, unpublished data)

People have become lazy. We have a free dining room service on Saturdays, because that iswhen the school doesnt supply food for the children. And many people come, but not just kids.People are used to it. . . some of them are people that are perfectly able to work. But it is easierto receive what is given.

Priest in Concepcion Municipality (Sabatini, Salcedo, and Wormald, unpublished data)

People have lost the notion of self-management; today if a project doesnt come here offeringsomething, people dont get involved. . . . People got used to receiving things. . .

Interview in Santa Adriana project (Lunecke 2008)

This group of families is totally dependent on and oriented towards obtaining benefitsfrom the national State or local government. These families have acquired their currentsocial position as recipients of social programs and benefits, and they do not plan onchanging their strategy in order to attain upward social mobility in the future. On thewhole, despite the fact that they acknowledge having better living conditions than in thepast, they tend to be pessimistic about the future and their possibilities for overcomingtheir precarious situation. While they do feel that the State is able to provide them withenough benefits to maintain a minimum standard of living, they believe it is impossibleto satisfy some of their most coveted needs, such as a safe neighborhood or permanentemployment. Where specific political representatives (aldermen, party members, etc.)manage programs, this group of families develops relationships that are not only func-tional, but also based on loyalty and gratitude towards whoever is providing the benefit.This represents a phenomenon Auyero (2001) describes extensively for the case of Ar-gentina.Dependent poverty is related to paternalistic policies aimed not at the future devel-

opment of recipients, but at merely providing them with money and other presentlyneeded resources. The criticism of such policies and programs has been a constant bothin Chilean and in the international literature and on both sides of the political spectrum.The criticism has led to changes that several countries have made in their policies towardsthe poor. The criticism can also be heard among the poor themselves. Dependent fami-lies are usually stigmatized by their neighbors and described as lazy or people with badhabits. In a society in which effort is a core value, the passive attitude of these families isbroadly condemned.Dependent families tend to inhabit subsidized housing projects built during and af-

ter the 1980s. These are poor families who received their homes as a result of a Statesubsidy, usually complemented with a governmentally ensured bank loan. In most cases,the various families arriving in their new neighborhoods had never met before and werenot members of organized groups. New housing units tended to be located in the ur-ban periphery far from urban centers and within neighborhoods lacking basic infrastruc-ture and opportunities. The functional and urban integration of such neighborhoods

108


into the citys structure of opportunities is precarious, and thus these families need forState aid continues long after the initial provision of the housing unit. In addition, suchfamilies have been unable to increase their assets and resources or create collective net-works of support, making dependency on local or national government a constant overtime.This type of poverty is not as prevalent in Chile as it is in other Latin American coun-

tries such as Argentina (Auyero 2001), or as it probably was in the United States at thetime of the urban political machine. The dependent poor in Buenos Aires rely heav-ily upon the social protection network and patronage offered by the Peronist (Justicial-ista) party. In contrast, Chiles neoliberal reforms of the 1980s reduced the overall sizeof the State, making it difficult for the state apparatus to act as a direct patron andjob provider. In addition, there are fewer discretionary policies in Chile, leaving littleroom for local political authorities to favor specific families and reducing clientelism. InBuenos Aires, the dependent poor acting in the name of the party sometimes end upnaturalizing illegal activities (beatings, blockades), adopting certain characteristics of theghettoized.

3. Ghettoized poverty

It is better not to mess with the drug dealers. In any case, they do not sell drugs inside theproject. Besides, they have helped a lot of people around here. Any problems, any need, they arethe first to offer help. And besides, the problems are between drug dealers. . .they do not botherpeople.

Interview in La Legua project (Ganter 2010)

Here at night, each gang takes their. . . part of the square; other gangs take theirs, and soon. . .

Focus Group in Bajos de Mena Area (Salcedo, Rasse, and Hermansen 2007)

Then they saw that it [drug dealing] was a better business, and I dont know if they createdintentional networks, but in the end it became a family business. In the end, the uncle, thesister, the whole family lived off of it. . . then they got their nephews involved, and after that thenetworks became family-based, and I think that was the base. It was family income, and theyrealized that not just one family could live off of that business, but other families too.


A third type of poverty in Chile highly resembles Wacquants (2000, 2001) descriptionof the American ghetto and the living conditions that families living there have to endure.For this reason, we refer to it as ghettoized poverty. Among ghettoized poor households,mainstream values and expectations tend to dissolve, and a new set of values is created.Integration into society at large is based solely on the consumption of goods and ser-vices resulting from illegal or semi legal activities (ranging from drug dealing to stealingelectric wire) that are totally accepted and naturalized by the entire neighborhood. Thesources of social prestige and status, especially for children and teenagers, are also relatedto the possession of certain goods (e.g., sneakers, pure-bred dogs, etc.) that more inte-grated poor families usually consider superfluous. The ghettoized poor also establish a

109

CITY & COMMUNITY

symbolic boundary between themselves and other urban poor. While they see themselvesas vivos (those who are able to really take advantage of all opportunities), the rest arereferred to as giles (those who work too much for too little).The mobility projects of these families may be individual, such as street vending or mi-

nor thefts, or collective, especially in the form of street gangs. In the case of collectiveprojects, these are built in many cases upon the remnants of past experiences of orga-nized poverty. Social capital is now devoted to criminal activities due to the sense thatmore traditional struggles for mobility lack efficacy (Lunecke 2008).These families have an optimistic view of the future based on their expectation of over-

coming poverty through their participation in illegal activities. It is common to hear sto-ries about teenagers who enter the criminal world in order to help their parents or whomaintain their own families with small children that way. Despite the fact that the meansof gaining access to consumption are different from those used by society at large, thesocial values of such groups tend to be traditional and even conservative: based onloyalty to the group, maintaining the family, or moving up to a middle class income andlifestyle.Territorially these groups are located in two different spaces: either subsidized housing

projects created during the 1980s and 1990s and located in the urban periphery with noprevious history of social organization, or older projects located in more central areasin which the importance of social organization is decreasing or is becoming a form ofnegative social capital.The increase in drug consumption, crime, and violence in the urban periphery since

the 1990s is a clear indicator that ghettoized poverty is growing. This is probably becauseof the retreat of the State, as Wacquant argues, but also because of the individualisticemphasis of policies implemented since the 1980s, and the retreat of other social actorsthat had been very involved with the urban poor from the 1960s to the 1980s, such as left-of-center political parties or the Catholic church. Homeownership in itself is not enoughto help families overcome poverty, especially if neighborhoods become dilapidated andmistrust and fear of others become the norm.

4. Unhopeful poverty

Im a socially resentful person. When the government made these houses, they made them foranimals, not for us. Hard working people live here, there are families struggling to keep theirsons and daughters off of drugs. But crime and drug dealing is eating us alive, it is killingus.

Focus Group in Bajos de Mena area (Sabatini, Salcedo, and Wormald, unpublished data)

Do you know what it was like arriving here? Getting to know the kids, spending years here,and then one day somebody woke me up to tell me that my friend had been shot because hewas in the drug business, or that Hans was completely burnt up because he was trying to stealelectric cables . . . .

Focus Group in Bajos de Mena area (Sabatini, Salcedo, and Wormald, unpublished data)

Woman A: . . .You have to put bars everywhere, gates, make the fences higher, all those kindsof measures.Woman B: They have put fences in at the bottom of the stairs.

110


Woman C: Its like we are in jail: you leave the building, a fence. You climb the stairs, a fence.You come inside, a fence. You go to the other building, a fence. You climb the stairs, a fence.Back here, a fence.

Focus Group in Bajos de Mena Area (Salcedo, Rasse, and Hermansen 2007)

What we call unhopeful poverty is the other face of ghettoized poverty and thus, isprobably also increasing among Santiagos urban poor. Usually both types share commonterritories and spaces. While ghettoized families attempt to carry out a social mobilityproject based on illegal activities, unhopeful families suffer the violence of their strivingneighbors and stigmatization of the territories that both kinds of families inhabit. Someof these families once had a project for social mobility, and some probably still persist inpursuing such a project (often based on hard work or minor inclusion in the illegal orinformal economy). However, repeated personal failure, the stigmatization of the placesin which they live, mistrust of neighbors, lack of any kind of organization, and the failureof government-led interventions have made them pessimistic about their ability to over-come their current situation. Similar to Mertons retreatism and Lewiss fatalism, thesefamilies do not have any hope for the improvement of their neighborhoods or their per-sonal situations. They end up losing faith in their own abilities and in the ability of theState to control the territory in which they live. In the end, they only want to get out ofthe place where they live.Moreover, such families feel that any place they would eventually come to inhabit would

end up being no different from the neighborhood in which they currently live. Theseexpectations are related to a life story in which the setting has always been the same:people in subsidized housing projects trying to overcome poverty while struggling againstviolence and crime. These families commonly say that they are suffering from depression,they will be unable to get a better job, and the only way of keeping their kids out of thedrug world is to keep them cooped up either at school or in the house. Their expectationsfor their kids are also low, because they have seen that finishing high school does notguarantee getting a better job. In their experience, having a high school degree todayis basically equivalent to having no education at all. This makes it more difficult to keeptheir children in school, because they see no difference between finishing (as there wouldbe no chance for continued education) or dropping out.These families obtain their resources from working in the formal or informal market.

However, they need the State and state subsidies in order to complement their income.In many cases they do odd jobs for those who are involved in the drug business, suchas cooking, washing clothes, or looking after their children. Since drug lords are theomnipresent role models within these areas, there is a strong temptation to abandon anykind of mobility project that is not based on incorporation into the criminal world.

5. Moyenized poverty

You have to consider that people in the Bosque de la Villa project are from the lower-middleclass, and the rest are emergent. . . . They are people on their way to becoming emergent middleclass.

Focus Group in the Las Condes municipality (Sabatini, Salcedo, and Wormald, unpublisheddata)

111

CITY & COMMUNITY

My goal was to take the tests and get into college. . .always, since I was a kid. In fact, myparents told me to switch to a technical school, learn a trade, start working, and then try tostudy. But I went to a regular high school.

Interview in Bajos de Mena area (Sabatini, Salcedo, and Wormald, unpublished data)

I think people, now that they have a little more money, put their children in private schools,some of them. Now there are many school transport services2 , and some time ago there werentany.


Here we are close to everything: We have supermarkets, a mall, healthcare facilities, a policestation. . . .It is a very good location.

Interview Penalolen Municipality (Salcedo 2010)

The term moyenized comes from Oberti and Preteceille (2004), who described thesituation of certain urban poor families in Brazil that, despite being poor, possess expec-tations and values, and behave like middle class families. In the case of Chile, there is agroup of poor families that have achieved a more successful degree of integration intosociety at large, due either to their location in urban areas with more economic oppor-tunities or to better strategies of mobilizing their personal assets. While such families donot usually live under the official poverty line, they are in a state of total economic vul-nerability as they are completely dependent on the labor market. They cannot afford toget ill or lose a job. These families possess a highly individualistic project of upward so-cial mobility, based solely on taking advantage of market opportunities as prescribed bythe individualistic approach of Chilean poverty reduction and housing policies since the1980s. Such families do not want to use State subsidies or services (education or health)both because of their poor quality and because of the need to differentiate themselvessymbolically from the rest of the urban poor.Additionally, the individualistic approach of these families is related to the judgments

they make regarding their neighbors and themselves. They typically find that the situa-tions, characteristics, and interests of the families in the neighborhood are so diverse thatit is almost impossible to imagine any collective strategies to work with them. Instead,moyenized families tend to make a direct association between individual effort and goalsattained, so they think that all the families that have made no progress since their arrivalto the neighborhood are not making enough of an effort. They do not acknowledge howmuch the State (through educational and housing vouchers) has had a central role intheir progress, or how the characteristics of their household (number of family membersable to work, number of children, etc.) have made it possible for them to overcomepoverty. Despite the importance the moyenized poor attribute to paying for social goodssuch as education and healthcare as a status symbol, their current economic situationdoes not allow them to be completely independent of the State. In one way or another,they still need the protective network of the welfare state. They may have acquired theirhouse through a government program, or their kids attend a public school, or a privateschool that is publicly subsidized, and if they get really sick they end up in a publichospital.

112


Given the fact they have been successful in embarking on a process of upward socialmobility, they are optimistic about the future. They believe that either they or their chil-dren will be able to definitively join the Chilean middle class. While they cannot consumeas many goods as a middle class family, they identify themselves with certain middle classvalues, such as the importance of hard work, education, and family stability. A commondiscourse is that if you work hard and care for your children, you will always be able tosucceed. They are the ones who work, make sacrifices, and behave as normal families,while the rest are condemned to poverty because of their own poor choices and failures.Moyenized families are located in poor areas throughout the city. However, they tend to

be more numerous and concentrated in poor areas located in upper- or middle-incomemunicipalities, or else in lower or middle class municipalities in which wealthy neighborsare moving in, thus creating border situations which have created new opportunities forsocial integration (Sabatini and Salcedo 2010). As they live in these wealthy municipali-ties, they tend to identify symbolically with the rest of the municipal population and notwith the urban poor in general. When they do live in poor municipalities, they establishsymbolic boundaries with their neighbors. Their hard work ethic is so strong that they areunable to see how the urban context in which they live, in contrast to more deterioratedurban areas, may have helped them to obtain what they have.This type of family is also increasing in number for three reasons: (1) the general

context of Chilean progress has provided many neighborhoods with enough successstories and role models for families to imitate; (2) for those families who obtained asubsidized housing unit in a socially mixed territory, homeownership has provided notonly a financial asset that they can utilize, but also an urban environment that aids intheir upward mobility; and finally, (3) all municipalities, except those inhabited onlyby poor residents, have generated programs to support their poorer residents. In thecase of wealthy municipalities, this leads to employment opportunities, police patrolling,cultural activities, and so on. In the case of Chile, housing may become either a sourceof marginalization and suffering, contributing to the formation of a ghettoized orunhopeful culture, or a trampoline for material progress. The difference depends onlocation and neighborhood quality.

DISCUSSION

The Chilean urban poor today are widely diverse, both in terms of culture and familyidentity, and in the patterns of structural inclusion or exclusion in society at large. Atleast in terms of identity, the idea of the poor as a homogeneous group or even the no-tion that mainstream or decent values coexist with street or ghetto values seemstoo simplistic to explain the effects of neoliberal restructuring of Chilean society. Indeed,these understandings are probably too simplistic to explain the urban poor in any ad-vanced society.The current situation of the urban poor in Santiago is partly the consequence of an ac-

cumulation of historical and political circumstances, as well as the policies correspondingto those periods. Since the 1960s the country has moved from left-of-center policies en-couraging organization of the poor, to a neoliberal restructuring based on individualisticpolicies, and finally to a more socially sensible neoliberal scheme in which communityand organization are re-introduced as aspects to be considered, but only as secondary

113

CITY & COMMUNITY

concerns. Each of these periods has generated a specific set of inequalities, and has con-tributed to consolidating specific values and expectations among the urban poor. Theend result is a wide variety of families, identities, strategies, and values that can be foundin poor neighborhoods.Moreover, the urban poor are not confined to predominantly poor neighborhoods.

The relationship between cultural patterns and urban dynamics gives rise to differentgroups among the urban poor based upon neighborhood characteristics. Therefore, thispaper proposed a more nuanced classification to understand urban poverty in Chile inits full richness. This is not only for academic reasons, but also because it is a way ofimproving and targeting public policies aimed at fighting poverty (Small et al. 2010).Drawing upon the scholarly literature, we sought measurable variables to describe ex-

isting differences among the urban poor of Chile. We do not assume, as was done inearly studies, that the poor share a proclivity to organizing and working together. Norare poor families always positively valued by other poor families; some have adopted mid-dle class values and are trying to differentiate themselves from the stereotype of beingpoor. Once poor families break through the barrier of everyday survival and have somespare budget for additional consumption, they do not always choose socially preferred,legitimate options or collective mobility strategies. In the end, we identified three clas-sificatory variables that have been relatively common in the study of urban poverty: (a)narratives regarding expectations for the future, (b) the nature of individual or familymobility projects, and (c) the repertoire of available strategies for social mobility. Usingthese variables, we constructed a five-group typology of poor families in terms of their dis-courses, attitudes, values, and behaviors. This categorization is ample enough to capturethe most relevant distinctions, and limited enough to be manageable and practical.This typology, and the variety of life situations that were uncovered, represent a chal-

lenge for Chilean public policies, and one that is probably faced by policy makers in othercountries as well. Generally, policies and the solutions they provide for poor or vulner-able families tend to be standardized and homogeneous, while in reality the recipientsof these benefits are completely differentiated from one another. It thus becomes neces-sary to consider the symbolic and structural differences between different kinds of urbanpoor, and design more specific types of solutions. Such solutions would consider the realcapacities, desires, and expectations of those living in poverty. In this way, for example,policies requiring organizational skills or an entrepreneurial spirit need to target fami-lies that will take full advantage of them, and not the poor population as a whole. Thegovernment has to consider that even if it invests in the improvement of public schools,there are going to be groups of families (moyenized) that are simply not going to sendtheir kids to these schools, due to their desire for distinction and differentiation fromother social groups.Based on the typology in this study, the most logical next steps would be to quantify

the number of families associated with each category, and then to classify urban policesaimed at fighting poverty according to the values and behaviors they require from theparticipant populations in order to be effective. In any case, if we assume that sub-culturesare related to structural conditions, we may be able to predict that certain groups willincrease in number towards the future (ghettoized, unhopeful, and moyenized) whileothers will diminish (dependent, organized). Since the Chilean State is no longer anactor with which the organized poor can negotiate, nor a source of direct patronage,jobs, or other benefits, families aiming to improve their living conditions or integrate

114


into society at large will be compelled to drift away from collective strategies. This, inturn, would imply a change in their expectations and values regarding the state, theirneighbors, or even society at large.

Notes

1 Salcedo et al. (2009) defined the new individualistic poor with six characteristics: (1) the appearance of an

individualistic life project, which is not dependent on the state or the organized community, a project that most

times includes home improvements, buying an automobile, or sending children to college; (2) the confidence

placed on private ownership and education as vehicles of social upward mobility; (3) the belief in the entitle-

ment to certain social rights, such as quality education, police protection, and so on; (4) the privatization of

daily life, with decreasing social contacts with neighbors and the use of public spaces; (5) the emergence of

issues of status and comparisons between neighbors; and (6) the formation of a new identity rooted in con-

sumption patterns (see Salcedo 2010, p. 99).2 In Chile, school transport is a private service one must pay for.

REFERENCES

Anderson, Elijah. 1990. Streetwise: Race, Class and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago, IL: University ofChicago Press.

. 1999. Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York, NY: WW Norton.. 2002. The Ideologically Driven Critique. American Journal of Sociology 107(6):15331550.Auyero, Javier. 2001. La Poltica de los Pobres: Practicas Clientelares del Peronismo. Buenos Aires: Manantial.Bianchi, Constanza. 2009. How do Retailer from Emerging Markets Internationalize? The Case of Chilean

Retailers. AMS / ACRA Fall Triennial retailing conference. Sept 30 Oct. 4, 2009, New Orleans, USA.Castells, Manuel. 1973. Movimiento de Pobladores y Lucha de Clases en Chile. EURE 3(7):935.CIS. 2007. Catastro Nacional de Campamentos. Retrieved August 25, 2010 (http://www.

untechoparachile.cl/subsitios/cis/web/investigaciones/catastro.html) .Collins, Joseph, and John Lear. 1995. Chiles Free Market Miracle: A Second Look. Oakland, CA: Food First.Contreras, Yasna. 2005. Dinamica Inmobiliaria en el Proceso de Renovacion Urbana en la Comuna de

Santiago: Barrios Brasil y Yungay. M.A. Thesis, Institute for Urban and Territorial Studies, Pontificia Univer-sidad Catolica de Chile.

Ducci, Mara Elena. 2000. The Dark Side of a Successful Housing Policy. Pp.14974 in Social Developmentin Latin America: The Policies of Reform, edited by Joseph Tulchin and Allison Garland. Boulder, CO: LynneRienner Publishers.

Ferguson, Bruce, and Jesus Navarrete. 2003. New Approaches to Progressive Housing in Latin America: A Keyto Habitat Programs and Policy. Habitat International 27(2):30923.

Fosse, Nathan. 2010. The Repertoire of Infidelity among Low Income Men: Doubt, Duty and Destiny. Annalsof the American Academy of Political and Social Science 629(1):12545.

Fundacion para la Superacion de la Pobreza. 2010. Voces de la Pobreza: Significados, Representaciones, y Sentir dePersonas en Situacion de Pobreza a lo largo de Chile. Santiago, Chile: Fundacion para la Superacion de la Pobreza.

Ganter, Rodrigo. 2010. Escenas de la Vida Urbana en La Legua Emergencia: Narcocultura y AmbivalenciasIdentitarias. Ph.D. Dissertation, Institute for Urban and Territorial Studies, Pontificia Universidad Catolicade Chile.

Garca, Johann. 2007. Comunidades Enfrentadas a Megaproyectos de Inversion. Resiliencia como Pilar deSustentabilidad. M.A. Thesis, Institute for Urban and Territorial Studies, Pontificia Universidad Catolica deChile.

Gilbert, Alan. 2002. Scan Globally, Reinvent Locally: Reflecting on the Origins of South Afrikas Capital Hous-ing Subsidy Policy. Urban Studies 39(10):191133.

. 2004. Helping the Poor through Housing Subsidies: Lessons from Chile, Colombia and South Afrika.Habitat International 28(1):1340.

Hannerz, Ulf. 1969. Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

115

CITY & COMMUNITY

Grupo Identidad y Memoria Popular. 2008. Memorias de La Victoria: Relatos de Vida en torno a los Inicios de laPoblacion. Santiago, Chile: Quimantu.

INE. National statistics Institute. 2010. Basic Statistics. http://www.ine.cl/ Retrieved August 25, 2010(http://www.ine.cl).

Janoshcka, Michael. 2002. El Nuevo Modelo de la Ciudad Latinoamericana: Fragmentacion y Privatizacion.EURE 28(85):1120.

Kaztman, Ruben. 2001. Seducidos y Abandonados: el Aislamiento Social de los Pobres Urbanos. Revista de laCEPAL 75, 17189.

and Alejandro Retamoso. 2006. Transformaciones Recientes en las Caractersticas de los Barrios Pobresde Montevideo. Pp. 167200 in De la Pobreza a la Exclusion: Continuidades y Rupturas de la Cuestion Social enAmerica Latina, edited by Gonzalo Sarav. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Prometeo.

Lamont, Michelle, and Marcel Fournier. 1992. Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of In-equality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Lewis, Oscar. 1959. Cinco Familias: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty. New York, NY: Basic Books.. 1966. La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty: San Juan and New York. New York, NY: Wiley.Lunecke, Alejandra. 2008. Segregacion Socio Espacial y Violencia Urbana: El Caso de la Poblacion Santa

Adriana. M.A. Thesis, Institute for Urban and Territorial Studies, Pontificia Universidad Catolica deChile.

MacLeod, Jay. 2009. Aint no Making It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood. Boulder, CO:Westview Press.

Marquez, Francisca. 2002. Apuntes de Terreno: Los Campamentos de Cerro Navia. Pp. 24152 in TerritorioLocal y Desarrollo, edited by Lucy Winchester and Enrique Gallicchio. Santiago, Chile: SUR CLAEH.

. 2003. Identidad y Fronteras Urbanas en Santiago. Psicologia em Revista 10(4):3551.. 2004. Margenes y Ceremonial: La Vida Social en Chile. Revista Poltica 43(35):185203.Martnez, Javier, and Margarita Palacios. 1996. Informe sobre la Decencia: La Diferenciacion Estamental .

Santiago, Chile: SUR.Matus, Christian. 2010. La Cultura Urbana y los Estilos de Vida en la Revitalizacion de un Barrio Patrimonial

del Centro de Santiago. Ph.D. Dissertation, Institute for Urban and Territorial Studies, Pontificia Universi-dad Catolica de Chile.

Mendez, Mara Luisa. 2009. Middle Class Identities in a Neoliberal Age: Tensions between Contested Authen-ticities. The Sociological Review 56(2):22037.

Merton, Robert K. 1938. Social Structure and Anomie. American Sociological Review 3(5):67282.

Oberti, Marco, and Edmond Preteceille. 2004. Le Mixite Sociale comme Object detude: Approaches, Diag-nostics, et Enjeux. Spatial structure and spatial segregation conference, June, 2004, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Portes, Alejandro. 1971. The Urban Slum in Chile: Types and Correlates. Land Economics 47, 23548. and Robert Manning. 1986. The Immigrant Enclave: Theory and Empirical Examples. Pp. 4768 in

Competitive Ethnic Relation, edited by Susan Olzak and Joan Nagel. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. and Leif Jensen. 1989. The Enclave and the Entrants: Patterns of Ethnic Enterprise in Miami Before

and After Mariel. American Sociological Review 54(6):92949., Luis Guarnido, and William Haller. 2002. Transnacional Entrepreneurs: An Alternative Form of Im-

migrant Economic Adaptation. American Sociological Review 67(2):278298.Rodrguez, Alfredo, and Ana Sugranyes. 2005. Los con Techo: Un Desafo para la Poltica de Vivienda Social . Santiago,

Chile: SUR.Roitman, Sonia. 2005. Who Segregates whom? The Analysis of a Gated Community in Mendoza, Argentina.

Housing Studies 20(1):30321.Rubio, Mara. 2009. Transformaciones en el Barrio Bellas ArtesLastarria: Un Proceso de Gentrificacion?

M.A. Thesis, Institute for Urban and Territorial Studies, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.Sabatini, Francisco. 1995. Barrio y Participacion: Mujeres Pobladoras en Santiago. Santiago, Chile: SUR., Gonzalo Caceres, and Jorge Cerda. 2001. Segregacion Residencial en las Principales Ciudades Chile-

nas: Tendencias de las Tres Ultimas Decadas y Posibles Cursos de Accion. EURE , 27(82):2142., Diego Campos, Gonzalo Caceres, and Laura Blonda. 2006. Nuevas formas de pobreza y movilizacion

popular en Santiago de Chile. Pp. 97136 in De la Pobreza a la Exclusion: Continuidades y Rupturas de la CuestionSocial en America Latina, edited by Gonzalo Sarav. Argentina; Prometeo: Buenos Aires.

and Rodrigo Salcedo. 2007. Gated Communities and the Poor: Functional and Symbolic Integration ina Context of Aggressive Capitalist Colonization. Housing Policy Debate 18(3):577606.

116


and . 2010. Theoretical Roads to Understand Deep Urban Change. Pp. 332355 in The CityRevisited: Urban Theory from Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, edited by Dennis Judd and Dick Simpson.Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

. 2010. The Last Slum: Moving from the Illegal Settlement to Home Ownership in Chile. Urban AffairsReview 46(1):90118.

, Alejandra Rasse, and Pablo Hermansen. 2007. When Public Space Is Not Useful: Ghetto DwellersStrategies to Gain Social Visibility and Recognition: The Case of Bajos de Mena in Santiago. Urban Justiceand Sustainability Conference, Vancouver, August 22-25.

Salcedo, Rodrigo, and Alvaro Torres. 2004. Gated Communities: Wall or Frontier? International Journal of Urbanand Regional Research 28(1):2744.

, , and Francisco Sabatini. 2009. Criminalidad, Control Social e Individualismo: Reflexiones enTorno a los Cambios Culturales del Habitar Popular. Pp. 6781 in Violencia y Delincuencia en Barrios: Sistem-atizacion de Experiencias edited by Alejandra Lunecke, Ana Munizaga, and Juan Ruiz. Santiago, Chile: PazCiudadanaUniversidad Alberto Hurtado.

Sampson, Robert. 2004. Neighborhood and Community: Collective Efficacy and Community Safety. New Econ-omy 11(2):10613.

Sarav, Gonzalo. 2006. Nuevas Dimensiones de la Pobreza en America Latina: Acumulacion de Desventajas yBiografas de Exclusion. Pp. 1954 In De la Pobreza a la Exclusion. Continuidades y Rupturas de la Cuestion socialen America Latina. edited by Gonzalo Sarav. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Prometeo.

Schnell, Izhak, and Benjamin Yoav. 2001. The Socio Spatial Isolation of Agents in Everyday Life: Spaces as anAspect of Segregation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 9(14):62236.

Shipler, David. 2004. The Working Poor: Invisible in America. New York, NY: Vintage Books.Skewes, Juan Carlos. 2001. La Exacerbacion de la Desigualdad en la Periferia Urbana de Santiago: El Diseno

Espacial de los Asentamientos Irregulares y su Desmantelamiento a Partir de las Polticas de Vivienda. Fer-mentum 11(31):25672.

Small, Mario. 2007. Is there such as a Thing as The Ghetto? The Perils of Assuming that the South Side ofChicago Represents Poor Black Neighborhoods. City 11(3):41321.

, David Harding, andMichelle Lamont. 2010. Introduction: Reconsidering Culture and Poverty. Annalsof the American Academy of Political and Social Science 629, 627.

SUR. 1987a. Revista Proposiciones No 13, edited by Alfredo Rodriguez and Eugenio Tironi. Santiago, Chile: SUR.. 1987b. Revista Proposiciones No 14, edited by Eugenio Tironi. Santiago, Chile: SUR.Svampa, Maristela. 2001. Los que Ganaron: La Vida en los Countries y Barrios Privados. Buenos Aires,

Argentina: Biblos.Thumala, Angelica. 2008. Riqueza y Piedad. Santiago, Chile: Random House.Tironi, Eugenio. 1999. La Irrupcion de las Masas y el Malestar de las Elites. Santiago, Chile: Grijalbo.Tironi, Manuel. 2003. Nueva Pobreza Urbana. Vivienda y Capital Social en Santiago de Chile, 19852000.

Santiago, Chile: RIL Editores.Vanderschueren, Franz. 1971. Significado Poltico de las Juntas de Vecinos en Poblaciones de Santiago. EURE

1(2):6790.Vekemans, Roger, Ismael Fuenzalida, and Jorge Giusti. 1969. Marginalidad en America Latina: Un Ensayo Di-

agnostico. Santiago, Chile: DESAL.Wacquant, Loic. 2000. Las Carceles de la Miseria. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Manantial.. 2001. Parias Urbanos: Marginalidad en la Ciudad a Comienzos del Milenio. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Manan-

tial.. 2007. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Cambridge, UK: Polity.Waldinger, Roger. 1989. Structural Opportunity or Ethnic Advantage? Immigrant Business Development in

New York. International Migration Review 23(1):4871.Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago, IL:

University of Chicago Press.Wilson, William Julius. 1996. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor . New York, NY: Vintage

Books.Young, Jock. 2007. Globalization and Social Exclusion: The Sociology of Vindictiveness and Criminology of

Transgression. Pp. 5494 in Gangs in a Global city: Alternatives to Traditional Criminology, edited by JohnHagedorn. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.

117

CITY & COMMUNITY

La naturaleza heterogenea de las familias pobres urbanas (Rodrigo Salcedo & AlejandraRasse)

ResumenEste artculo aborda el debate academico sobre la homogeneidad o heterogeneidad cul-tural de las familias pobres urbanas. Mientras autores como Lewis (1959) o Wacquant(2000; 2001) plantean que las desventajas estructurales estan asociadas con un tipo par-ticular de identidad o de cultura, otros como Hannerz (1969), Anderson (1999; 2002)o Portes (Portes y Manning, 1986; Portes y Jensen, 1989) consideran que es posible en-contrar conductas, expectativas, procesos de toma de decisiones y resultados diferentesentre personas que viven en condiciones estructurales aparentemente identicas. A partirdel estudio de caso de Santiago, Chile diferenciamos entre cinco culturas o identidadesdistintas entre las personas pobres. Dichas identidades parecen ser el producto de cir-cunstancias historicas y polticas diferentes al igual que polticas publicas diferenciadas.El artculo finaliza con una discusion sobre la necesidad de que las polticas de reduccionde la pobreza consideren estas diferencias entre los pobres.

118

Salcedo, Rodrigo y Alejandra Rasse - The Heterogeneous Nature of Urban Poor Families

Documents

Transcript of Salcedo, Rodrigo y Alejandra Rasse - The Heterogeneous Nature of Urban Poor Families