Far from Politics. Space and Political Strategies in Popular Neighborhoods in Chile

In recent years, Latin America has been the scene of significant urban revolts. In October 2019, Chile witnessed the most important mobilization since the restoration of democracy in 1990. Unlike other national-scale mobilizations, the “social uprising” was not exclusively led by young students. Although most of the protesters were young people with greater cultural capital (González and Le Foulon, 2020), there were significant demonstrations in the urban peripheries (Álvarez-López et al., 2024; Escoffier, 2023). This broad participation of residents from marginalized neighborhoods in the protests, while common in the region, challenged previous knowledge regarding the influence of the "space" in political participation. Previous research suggests that residential segregation and territorial stigma produce fatalistic attitudes that discourage political engagement, weakening democracy (Desmond and Travis, 2018; Rodgers, 2019).

Contrary to this approach, this study shows that the spatial marginalization of popular sectors, while creating obstacles to participation, does not lead to depoliticization. Based on qualitative research conducted in two popular neighborhoods in Santiago, this research examines three political strategies—institutional, collaborative, and oppositional—through which residents of marginalized neighborhoods seek to address their everyday material hardships, influence national politics, and contest the neighborhood’s reputation in the metropolitan imaginary. Using Bourdieu's perspective, this study analyzes how these strategies are influenced by the interactions between the social, physical, and symbolic dimensions of space (Wacquant, 2023).