2014/2015 Janey Annual Workshop: Valentina Abufhele and Julia Carrillo
Friday May 8th, 10am, History Conference Room 529
Janey Fellows Valentina Abufhele and Julia Carrillo present their most recent work based on the 2014/2015 Janey Fellowship they were awarded. See titles of their presentations and abstracts below:
Valentina Abufhele: Land squatting, housing struggles and the building of citizenship: The case of La Toma de Peñalolén
This article explores the politics of a squatters’ organization that developed within La Toma de Peñalolén (Occupation of Peñalolén), a land occupation that took place in Santiago, Chile in 1999. During the implementation of a massive housing program, involving the construction of social housing in low-cost land, these squatters negotiated with the State an alternative solution, and were able to attain subsidized housing in the district of their choice. In order to analyze their practices, I build upon a scholarship that emphasizes the relationships between struggles for housing and the development of citizenship. This scholarship illuminates housing struggles as privileged sites to claim more substantive citizenship, and for the making of political subjects. The case of La Toma confirms these findings, and also illuminates the limits of this virtuous relationship to produce durable and long-term feelings of membership to the political community.
Julia Patricia Carrillo: Something Borrowed, Something Old, Something Blue: Researching Colombian Migration
Massive, cross-border Colombian migration is a recent phenomenon, related to the country’s on-going armed conflict. As a research subject, Colombian migration has been the object of study of economists, political scientists, anthropologists, and sociologists since the late 1970s. Even though the exact number of Colombians abroad is unknown, the migrant community is becoming increasingly visible – as the Colombian Government has, since 2012, engaged in a series of peace negotiations with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC-EP) that might end the country’s armed conflict. In this process, Colombians abroad have been adamant in making themselves present; Peace Tables (Mesas de Paz) were organized in different cities around the globe in order to draft proposals delivered to the negotiating teams, and representatives of the victims living in exile have been invited to participate in the peace-rounds in Havana. With this in mind, questions such as who are these migrants are, the reasons why they leave, the countries where they leave to, and the elements that determine the types of associations that emerge from the Colombian migrant community, appear ever-relevant.
This work aims at taking account of research undertaken to date on Colombian migrants (their profiles, their associative lives) and Colombian migration (its temporalities and causes), with a view to laying the ground for a bigger project examining Colombians abroad and their participation in conflict transformation in the homeland. e citizenship, and for the making of political subjects. The case of La Toma confirms these findings, and also illuminates the limits of this virtuous relationship to produce durable and long-term feelings of membership to the political community.