Digitally Mediated Housing Policies. an Argentine Case

The information systems of public policies are being transformed. This process impacts, in turn, on the different construction and response stages to social problems: policy design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

In this paper we propose to analyze, based on the case of the “Mi Pieza” Program in Argentina, the advance of digitalization in housing policies, as a new feature that stresses the territorialization model of these policies, in which social and territorial-based organizations perform a fundamental role. The analysis shows that, beyond the individualization from the State, new solidarity networks and aid links are being built.

The theoretical perspective is based on the interdisciplinary field of Urban Studies, the Sociology of bodies/emotions and the Anthropology of the State. In methodological terms, interviews were conducted with the national level government officials who designed and managed the program, beneficiaries of the program and territorial organizations. Field notes and secondary sources are added as part of the ethnographic fieldwork in the framework of the PhD thesis in Anthropology carried out in a settlement in the northern part of the Metropolitan area of Buenos Aires.