Fighting Marginalisation in New Self-Built Settlements in Chile: Commoning in Campamentos via Self-Managed Education

Chile is experiencing a twofold housing crisis provoked by the market and the state. On the market side, re-commodification of the housing market limits the access of those on low incomes; on the state side, exhaustion of the housing subsidies system (voucherism) due to low quality and peripheral social housing reflect an inability to deliver. In this context, self-built settlements (SBS) have skyrocketed to levels unseen since the 1980s and result in the spatial concentration of vulnerable Chilean and immigrant families in small and dense areas without limited access to urban services. This paper analyses how common resources are produced and managed in recent SBS in Santiago, through a socio-spatial analysis of a peripheral industrial brownfield occupied since 2015. The possibilities and channels of integration (housing, jobs, education) for families are differentiated by nationality, citizenship status and political leverage; however, common resources are valued and used transversally. Amidst partial efforts from the state to deliver welfare, lack of information and distrust from SBS neighbours towards institutions, and even to their own representatives, are problems that reinforce marginalisation. Self-managed organisations contribute to commoning, supporting children’s access to education and try to appropriate the community spaces co-produced with NGOs, neighbours and researchers.