The social effects of judicialized policies: A study of urban-environmental conflicts and territorial inscription in a slum of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

This chapter analyses how social groups create a territorial attachment and build a sense ofsolidarity as a consequence of policy implementation. Based on a pragmatic approach, thatseeks to understand the emergence of collective actors as a research question in and ofitself, the article examines the ways in which conflictive environmental policies, whichimply a reconfiguration of land uses, lead to the development of new identities, socialengagement and, finally, political involvement with public matters.This chapter studies a judicial ruling that in 2008 instructed the environmental clean-up of ahighly polluted river basin in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires. Among othermeasures, this sentence ordered the city government to open up a towpath along the 60-kilometres-long coastline in order to allow sanitation, an easier control of the cleaningactivities and free circulation. However, the shores were home to numerous slums whoseinhabitants would soon find out that they would have to be resettled.These pages examine how the judicial resolution generated a sense of alarm, led to thecreation of a new territorial identity and fostered the emergence of solidarity bonds andprotest against the resettlements. Based on an ethnographic fieldwork conducted from2014 to 2019 in the largest of all the slums involved (called ‘Villa 21-24’), the articlespecifically analyses three dimensions of this process. Firstly, the tensions betweensubjective territorial attachment and objective environmental risks; secondly, the effects ofthe Supreme Court’s ruling in the actors’ perception and action within the community; andthirdly, the ways in which solidarity bonds and social networks are created as a consequenceof a new relationship with the territory.