Doctoral Dissertation Research: Urbanization and Social Movements

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SES-0623062John MarkoffMaria AlverezWhat explains the recent explosion and dynamics of land squatting in Montevideo, Uruguay? Over the last few decades squatter settlements have increased dramatically in Montevideo, a city that lacked a "frontier" of poor illegal settlements until the 1980s. Today, about 10 % of the city's population lives on illegally occupied land. Settlements mushroomed without mediating natural disasters and without population growth. Other forces were in action. From a social movement perspective, this project challenges the assumption that socioeconomic factors such as poverty were the only causes of the wave of land invasions in the 1990s. Instead, it will test whether political opportunities and diffusion processes also shaped the cycle and examine the mechanisms through which opportunities and diffusion translated into mobilization. The research will use a combination of statistical analysis, in depth interviews and document analysis, to study the origins and trajectories of squatting as a social movement from 1975 to 2005. The project represents the first systematic study of the causes and processes of land invasions in Montevideo. Secondly, it will illuminate understudied aspects of the process of squatting, especially the agency of squatters and the politics of collective action. And, third, the project will systematically test and enrich explanatory theories of mobilization. Deploying micro- and macro-level concepts together and tracking causal mechanisms through which actors may translate opportunities into mobilization will supplement existing social movement theoryBroader Impacts. Overall, the project will contribute to the understanding of contentious politics in general and of land squatting as one of its particular forms and directly enrich the body of scholarship on urbanization in Latin America. Research findings can possibly be used by scholars, policymakers, and human right workers who want to design more efficient and meaningful policies to overcome the social problems commonly associated with squatter communities and other marginalized groups, such as poverty, unemployment and lack of essential services.