Bricolage at the urban periphery: poor people's strategies in Argentina and Ecuador

Maricarmen Hernández and Javier Auyero

Chapter 12 in A Modern Guide to Urban Poverty, 2026, pp 248-268 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in two marginalized neighborhoods in Argentina and Ecuador, this chapter dissects poor people's strategies to make ends meet, navigate interpersonal violence, and cope with environmental risks. The chapter argues by way of empirical demonstration that the urban poor are bricoleurs, combining formal and informal work, mutual aid, collective action, patronage networks, and illicit activities to subsist and make progress. Poor people's strategies, we show, should be studied diachronically, synchronically, and granularly.

Keywords: Political Sociology; Latin America; Survival Strategies; Informal Communities; Ethnography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781800889682
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