For the Right to Live in Peace: Political Agency and Claims of Popular Neighborhoods in the Face of Insecurity and Violence

In the context of the social uprising, residents of working-class neighborhoods were publicly recognized for participating in protests demanding greater social protection, advocating for social rights. The current crisis of insecurity and its public discussion seem to have overshadowed the significance of the popular demands raised during these protests. Less visible than this claims, mobilizations have emerged in various working-class neighborhoods of Chilean cities, demanding greater security and a more egalitarian system of justice. This observation led us to engage in a critical dialogue with the literature that interprets the issue of security exclusively as a dynamic of domination and exclusion of the inhabitants of these neighborhoods (Fassin, 2013; Wacquant, 2014; Comaroff, 2013). Drawing on recent studies about the everyday resistances and demands of these neighborhoods in the face of insecurity (Moncada, 2021; Savell, 2021; Auyero and Sobering, 2023), our project aimed to analyze these inhabitants' daily and political responses in confronting violence and demanding more protection and justice from the state. For this purpose, we relied on qualitative research in which we conducted 35 in-depth interviews and numerous observations between November 2020 and February 2022 in a working-class neighborhood located in the southwestern part of the Metropolitan Region in Chile. In this way, we found that these neighbors have confronted daily violence and insecurity through persistent, contentious, and political agency, demanding more protection and justice from various levels of the State. Through security organizations and mobilizations, residents have challenged the notions of justice and citizenship that define the relationship between the State and poor neighborhoods, using security as a grammar of rights to criticize the unequal distribution of protection and justice in Chilean society.