Urban reorderings: informality, emotional governance, and the remaking of home in Buenos Aires

Source abstract

State-led housing relocations are not merely about shelter; they are political and emotional interventions that reshape urban life. This article examines how social housing policies in Argentina operate as affective technologies of government and urban ordering. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted within a relocation program in the metropolitan region of Buenos Aires, it analyzes how families moving from informal settlements to state-built housing complexes navigate profound shifts in material conditions, moral expectations, and affective attachments.Rather than conceiving informality as the absence of the state, the study draws on critical urban theory to understand it as a differentiated zone of regulation. Relocation thus emerges not as a linear path to inclusion, but as a contested process of political inscription that redefines who belongs in the city and under what conditions. By foregrounding the entanglements between dwelling, affect, and urban power, this article contributes to critical debates on informality, moral economies, and the production of urban citizenship in Latin America.