Contesting dichotomies: Urban (in)formality in Argentina

By Soledad Balerdi, National University of La Plata

Land occupation and self-construction of houses are the most common ways through which disadvantaged populations solve their access to housing in developing countries. These practices are usually designated as “informal” and “illegal” by the State, the civil society, and the media. Based on the emic concept of “legal land takeover”, I will propose a broader comprehension of these processes, where formality / informality, and legality / illegality, are not dichotomies but articulated mechanisms in which the urban space is built in the cities of the Global South.

Southern urbanism has vastly argued that mainstream urban theories, originating from the Global North, have been largely regarded as universal and placeless, while cities from the “south” have historically been viewed more as testimony than theory (Bahn, 2019). According to Bahn (2019), “the urbanism of these cities has been read, described and understood largely in terms of theory built elsewhere” (p. 641). This text takes on the challenge of thinking from these places, and not just about them (Bahn, 2019). Or as Caldeira puts it, “thinking with an accent”: “to create urban theories that can account for modes of urbanization whose logic is different from that of the industrial cities of the North” (Caldeira, 2017, p. 4).

“Legal land takeover” sounds like an oxymoron, as “takeover”, “occupation” or “invasion” are the terms that have been used to describe the illegal takeover of land by low-income dwellers and their organizations and social movements. These processes produce “informal” or “irregular” spaces where the low-income groups live and build their “habitat” (Janoschka, 2016).

Informality is not just a technique or objective characteristic of poor neighborhoods or settlements (in terms of the lack of property titles or the incorrect use concerning land use prescriptions), but –in many cases- it is also a mechanism used by the State to legitimate the eviction of these settlers in the name of the protection of private property rights. As a relational (Pasquetti and Picker, 2017) or procedural category (Müller, 2017), informality is not a “static fact” or a “marker of the urban poor’s form of urbanization”, but rather an effect of power relations and class struggle (Müller, 2017, p. 498).

However, as my research on irregular settlements and housing policies in Argentina seeks to show, the State also intervenes in many cases enabling negotiation with the dwellers and their organizations to resolve the housing conflict. In doing so, the State recognizes and even institutionalizes the occupation as an action that, although not legal, is legitimized.

The scene: a relocation conflict in Argentina

Latin American cities as we know them today have originated from a vertiginous urbanization process during the 20th century, marked by the massive internal migration of workers that traveled from rural areas to the cities; the concentration of the population in one or two large cities per country and the expansion of “informal” or “irregular” settlements on the peripheries of those cities, where low-income groups established. The first land occupations in Argentina took place in the 1980s. Still, it is a practice that -although with many changes- has been maintained until today as a mechanism for low-income groups to guarantee themselves their access to land and housing. State interventions and policies towards informal settlements have changed over the years and have assumed different characteristics depending on the governments. These modes of intervention have gone from eradication to regularization of informal settlements. However, despite the various housing policies implemented, inequality in access to habitat remains one of the main social problems Latin American cities face today. Currently, in Argentina, there are more than 5,000 “informal urbanizations” characterized by different degrees of precariousness in housing infrastructure, overcrowding, deficiency of public services, and irregular tenure.

This reflection is based on a scene that took place during a relocation process in the city of La Plata. I studied this process, from an ethnographic approach, following a conflict motivated by the relocation of a small neighbourhood called Las Quintas, an informal settlement in the city’s periphery.

Las Quintas is a small settlement inhabited by an indigenous population from northern Argentina who migrated in the early 2000s, displaced from the rural areas where they used to live and in search of livelihood in the city. They settled on the land in precarious conditions, building small wood, plastic, and sheet metal shelters. Then, they consolidated the neighborhood over the years and progressively improved their houses.[1]

In 2015, a hydraulic infrastructure project began to be developed to expand a stream that runs next to the neighborhood. Las Quintas is located on the banks of the stream. The provincial government promoted this project due to a flood that took place in the city of La Plata two years earlier, which caused the death of 100 people. The infrastructure project promised to prevent future flooding in the city, but to do so implied the displacement of the low-income populations living on the stream’s banks. These areas were not land suitable for building; however, they had been occupied for many years by low-income populations (mostly migrants from the north of the country and neighboring countries such as Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru) who, upon finding “empty” and public lands, began to build their homes there.

According to Michael Janoschka (2016), displacement refers not only to the involuntary movement of people, but also to the social and spatial injustice that affects their legitimate right to the city; especially regarding their right to the enjoyment of the benefits of centrality. Forced displacement of vulnerable populations has been a critical urban process in Latin America (Janoschka, 2016), but not all displacement processes are the same or have the same features. In Argentina, some neoliberal governments have had an expulsion or eviction policy without offering any alternative to the displaced populations. In other periods, these displacements have taken place while providing the displaced populations with alternative destinations.

In the case of Las Quintas, the inhabitants who had to be displaced from their neighborhood to develop the hydraulic work would be transferred to new houses that the State would build for them in another sector of the periphery.

The conflict between the inhabitants and state officials arose when the residents rejected the relocation offer. Although the new houses came with property titles, they refused to be displaced from their current neighborhood. The rejection stemmed from the residents’ perception that the area they were being relocated to was more “insecure” or “unsafe”.[2]

And they were able to negotiate with state officials because their voices were raised by the leaders of the social organization to which they belonged. Urban social movements have historically had a strong presence in poor neighborhoods. They articulate demands for improvements in working and housing conditions of low-income populations, pressing to or negotiating with the State, which recognizes them as valid interlocutors in conflicts. According to Caldeira (2017), state institutions are vital in creating or promoting the conditions for the inclusion of the poor in the city. This is the case in the many regularization and urbanization programs that are implemented in the Latin American cities. However, the state only acts in the interest of dwellers when their organizations manage to pressure it, “maintaining their disturbing presence in public spaces”, demanding changes in policies and institutional practices. When such organizing weakens, policies may shift toward dispossession and displacement (Caldeira, 2017, p. 16).

In this scenario, the inhabitants of Las Quintas pressured the State officials, threatening to forcibly impede the continuation of the hydraulic work if their demand was not accepted by publicly protesting and blocking roads in the city center (a political action repertoire with a long tradition in Argentina, the so-called “piquete”) or even literally putting themselves in front of the machines to stop them working. This urban conflict was not the first of this type that the State officials had to deal with. So they knew that the threat was not made by just a few affected dwellers from this little neighborhood but by a strong social organization that could mobilize hundreds of low-income dwellers from this and from other settlements of the city.

In the end, the State officials agreed upon the demand and the plan for the relocation of these dwellers was modified: a new destination for the relocation, proposed by the dwellers, was accepted.

The new destination was a vacant public land, property of the Ministry of Health of the province. Although it was also located in the periphery, even farther than Las Quintas from the city centre, the dwellers perceived it as a more tranquil space to live in. To begin with the construction of the houses on that land, the State officials in charge of the relocation process (from the Secretary of Land and Housing) had to receive from the current owner –another sector of the same provincial State- a formal “cession of rights”. So, to formally proceed with the relocation, the Ministry of Health simply had to sign a document transferring the land –that wasn’t being used- to the Secretary of Land and Housing. But, the formal transfer never occurred, perhaps due to the state bureaucracy’s slowness or conflicts of interest between the two government areas.

What happened next shows the point of this story: the State officials with whom the inhabitants were negotiating, called the organization’s leader and told him to proceed with the “legal takeover“. This meant that the inhabitants should occupy the land without waiting for the formal cession of rights, and the State officials would guarantee them, on their word, that they would not be evicted.

The very definition of “takeover”, even as it is understood by scholars, implies its illegal character. So what did the term “legal” used by the State official mean? “Legal” in this case seems to mean “informally authorized by the State” to carry out an otherwise “illegal” action. By enabling the “legal” takeover of the land, the State is institutionalizing a particular state of affairs, so –in the field- the boundaries between binary concepts, such as legal/illegal and formal/informal, are blurred.

The role of (in)formality in the production of the city

The low-income habitat is built through daily practices that involve conflicts, negotiations and agreements between inhabitants, social organizations and the State in the local territory. In this process, land occupation and self-construction of housing become practices endorsed – although not publicly – by State officials to respond to demands that cannot be met through “formal” channels.

According to Ayşe Buğra (1998), irregular settlements play an important role in developing countries as a spontaneous solution to the problem of low-income housing. However, in this process, the State actively shapes the informal housing sector. These irregular patterns of access to urban land become an institutionalized redistributive practice.

What can this case tell us about informality and the role of the State? Informality is a concept that emerged from the analysis of urbanizations in Latin America in the 20th century and is typically thought of as an essential characteristic of these cities, and what supposedly differentiates them from the modern and formal cities of Europe or North America (Segura, 2021). For Caldeira (2017), the notion of informality implies a dualist reasoning that must be set aside in the analysis of cities and its inequalities, as peripheries usually do not only unsettle official logics -those of legal property or state regulation for example- but they operate with them in transversal engagements.

My purpose in this brief reflection was to comprehend the urban, problematizing these binary categories, modern-traditional, developed-underdeveloped, formal-informal, by showing that formality and informality, legality and illegality, are articulated mechanisms throughout which the city is produced. So “informality” is not the exclusive characteristic of the self-built habitat of the urban poor in Latin America. Instead formality/informality –as an articulated concept- is rather the more general way in which the State produces the city.

According to Ananya Roy (2009), “First World” urban and metropolitan theory is curiously mute on the subject of informality, perhaps because it is thought of as an intrinsic feature of “Third World” cities, as a sphere of deregulation, an activity outside the scope of the State. But “informality”, as this case shows, does not imply the absence of the State. The State produces informality: it assigns and sets a differentiated value to spaces, determining what is and what is not informal, and in many cases the State itself operates in an informal manner. Roy also argues that informality is not a traditional or pre-capitalist aftertaste. It is a form of capitalist production of space. It is not limited to marginal spaces or low-income habitats; it is also a mechanism used by private urban enterprises. We can see this in the many cases of land grabbing by private investors for economic purposes (agriculture, real estate market).

I believe this empirical case in a small neighbourhood in La Plata can broaden our comprehension of the modalities in which the State produces the city. The State is not a monolithic actor, it is embodied in people who interact with others in specific settings, and who make decisions within certain circumstances. And its actions are not always or necessarily unidirectional or top-down; there are margins for resistance, negotiation, or re-appropriation.

Roy recognizes that Latin American researchers are generally interested in attending how the urban poor demand and appropriate adequate urban space and livelihoods, thus challenging the unequal conditions of citizenship that have been established in the Latin American city. In the same direction, Janoshcka argues that incorporating the concept of ‘habitat’ into the displacement dynamics allows us to further explore the spatial (re)appropriation led by low-income people and the subsequent construction of “territories in resistance”.

So the broad concept of formality/informality can also be thought of as a mechanism deployed by the urban poor to access land and housing in their struggle for the right to the city. In other words, it allows us not only to pluralize our approach to the State but also to attend to the strategies and knowledge that the urban poor deploy to influence the construction of their habitat in a situation of dispossession.

Cite this article as: Balerdi, S. (2025, April 10). Contesting dichotomies: urban (in)formality in Argentina. Global Qualitative Sociology Network. https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/2025/04/10/contesting-dichotomies/

Contesting dichotomies: Urban (in)formality in Argentina

By Soledad Balerdi, National University of La Plata

The scene: a relocation conflict in Argentina

In the case of Las Quintas, the inhabitants who had to be displaced from their neighborhood to develop the hydraulic work would be transferred to new houses that the State would build for them in another sector of the periphery.

In the end, the State officials agreed upon the demand and the plan for the relocation of these dwellers was modified: a new destination for the relocation, proposed by the dwellers, was accepted.

The role of (in)formality in the production of the city

Contesting dichotomies: Urban (in)formality in Argentina

By Soledad Balerdi, National University of La Plata

The scene: a relocation conflict in Argentina

In the case of Las Quintas, the inhabitants who had to be displaced from their neighborhood to develop the hydraulic work would be transferred to new houses that the State would build for them in another sector of the periphery.

In the end, the State officials agreed upon the demand and the plan for the relocation of these dwellers was modified: a new destination for the relocation, proposed by the dwellers, was accepted.

The role of (in)formality in the production of the city