CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE CONCEPT OF INFORMALITY IN LIGHT OF THE PROCESSES OF PRODUCTION OF URBAN SPACE IN LATIN AMERICA
This panel seeks to bring together three researchers from different Latin American countries to present reflections on the concept of informality, based on their respective research agendas and questions. The processes of production of space in Latin America offer countless possibilities for a critical revisiting of this concept, in search of theoretical references suited to understanding these processes. It is a concept long used in the literature on urban issues, yet one that is debated as to its analytical consistency and its relevance to the material dynamics present in the cities of the continent. Between 2016 and 2018, the city of Medellín formulated a public policy that was incorporated into the urban agenda thanks to the mobilization of the communities affected by the city’s process of urban transformation, which began in the early twenty-first century under the internationalized model of social urbanism. This is the Public Policy for the Protection of Residents and Economic and Productive Activities (Política Pública de Protección a Moradores y Actividades Económicas y Productivas). The panel proposes a reflection from a little-explored perspective: how the communities of popular neighborhoods, consolidated over more than three decades and classified as informal, have managed, through their struggles and experiences, to foster the emergence of a system of community regulation based on the recognition of the resident as a subject of rights, as well as of territory and permanence as rights that must be recognized and protected. The researchers invited to this panel will present data from their empirical research on the practices of the urban popular sectors, which has given rise to a recent and rich body of literature, as well as to broad research projects, pointing toward the adoption of other theoretical categories, beyond so-called “informality”, perhaps more closely connected to what happens in self-produced popular neighborhoods.
