Pandemic, Social Policies and Emotions in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires

Abstract

Social policies as state interventions are part of the so-called “social question” (sensu Castel) and the development of the capitalist system. As part of the social issue over the decades, social policies have been designed and implemented, essentially, with the aim of achieving the integration of society and cushioning the inequalities typical of the capitalist economic relations of production. Then it becomes evident that these policies are based on the need to compensate for the effects of exclusion and, as a consequence, palpable consequences of global economic and political processes are generated in close relation to the rights to health, housing, social security, employment and, therefore, the consolidation of social phenomena in various spheres of society. The designs of social policies are in accordance with the State models of which they are a part, the structure of social classes and the social and economic sectors. For this reason, these policies mould and model the practices of the different social actors, refer to desirable societies, perform the social issue, and therefore become a privileged field of observation of the forms of sociopolitical order.In recent decades, social policies in the global order (De Sena 2018) and in Argentina (De Sena 2020) of attention to situations of poverty have been increasing and their designs, in general, have three main characteristics: they are aimed at women, are monetary subsidies, and are massive in scale, giving way to other conditions of production and reproduction of life, development of sociabilities, symbolic, cognitive-affective practices and therefore to new forms of social structuring. This configures the structure of sensibilities (De Sena 2014; Scribano and De Sena 2013) that affect the daily ways of living and the experientialities of the targeted subjects (Scribano 2010).In this context, in 2020 a global event such as the Covid-19 pandemic was (and still is) is added, which disrupted all forms of social interaction. In each country and city, its impact was different in principle due to previous living conditions (labour, education, technology, health, housing, etc.) and the possibility of maintaining a quarantine was different both in individual and social terms. In Argentina prior to the pandemic (2019) labour informality was almost 36% and in Greater Buenos Aires 38.4% (Trujillo Salazar and Villafañe 2021), and specifically in the Municipality of La Matanza it reached 50.2% (De Sena, 2019). This information alone allows us to understand the uneasiness of this population that suddenly could not go out to work and therefore was left without income. In Argentina, this problem has been growing, and in response the number of social programs for its rectification (unemployment, labour informality, support for education, old age, etc) is increasing. It is estimated that in 2018 just over 30% of households received support from such a program (Observatory of the Argentine Social Debt 2018). In this context, the present paper reviews the emotions of the recipients of social policies in a municipality marked by heterogeneity and situations of economic, social and environmental vulnerability, prior to the pandemic and during 2020 and 2021.