Emergencies and rescues: The logics of vulnerability and care among drug users in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

This article addresses the informal practices of care among drug users from vulnerable populations in Buenos Aires, within a context of economic crisis, criminalization, and marginalization. Based on ethnographic research carried out since 2001, I argue that this set of practices, knowledge, and social networking known locally as "rescuing" seek to minimize bodily harms, harm to relationships, as well as to reduce threats to survival. This analysis shows how this logic of care varies according to the type of substance consumed, gender, socioeconomic status, social capital, access to institutions, family networks, and life trajectories. Finally, the development of this logic of care for drug use based on rescuing practices, allows us to understand the relationships between structural transformations and everyday life through the processes the privatization of care and the politicization of suffering.