Doctoral Dissertation Research: New Urban Territories and the Geography of Precarious Labor

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Like many other cities in developing nations, the urban periphery of Buenos Aires, Argentina, has long been a site of high poverty and precarious living conditions. Many neighborhoods lack potable water and sewage systems, residents survive on informal employment, and occupants build their own houses, often alongside landfills or in other hazardous locations. These areas suffered enormously during Argentina's 2001 economic crisis, creating unemployment levels of up to 50 percent in some areas and causing many people to lose access to basic services, including electricity and running water. This doctoral dissertation research project will examine grassroots responses in the urban periphery to the economic crisis, especially the organization of the Movements of Unemployed Workers (Movimientos de Trabajadores Desocupados -- MTDs), which were created to provide alternative social and economic opportunities in the wake of the 2001 economic crisis. The doctoral student will address the following questions: (1) How have the MTDs used territorial organizational strategies to respond to the specific conditions in the urban periphery? (2) What are the alternative economic practices of the MTD and what effects have these practices had in terms of meeting the basic needs of participants and producing new social relations? The project will focus on three MTDs in different parts of the urban periphery that employ different strategies and practices in order to sustain the livelihoods of their members and challenge the increasing paucity of predictability or stability of everyday life. The student will use a variety of qualitative methods in order to answer these questions, including in-depth interviews, participant-observation, and participatory mapping with each MTD.This project will take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding changing labor relations in the global economy. By starting from the perspective of the unemployed, the project will explore the effects of contemporary capitalism on marginalized populations and the responses of those people. The project will contributes to work in geography, development studies, and anthropology on diverse and alternative economies, exploring the different ways in which people form economic, social and spatial relations. The project will provide insights from the perspective of unemployed movements, enhancing capabilities to glimpse how those most affected by economic downturns experience them and create their own means of survival in times of crisis. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.