Women's social participation in a shantytown. Tensions and situated appropriations of social policy in Argentina

Abstract

The article seeks to consider the tensions that, in the slum La Escondida of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires in Argentina, are put into play between the local and social actors participating territorially. Also, the institutional logics applied by the State through different governmental and non-governmental organizations and deployed in the field of Argentine social policy. In this way, state, governmental and nongovernmental institutions establish definitions regarding the forms of social intervention, beneficiaries, and benefits of the social policy, definitions tensioned in the spaces of community organization. It focuses on community kitchens where women's broad and extended participation is observed, linked to specific biographical trajectories. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with women in charge of community kitchens, female workers in those spaces, and members of governmental and nongovernmental institutions present in Villa La Escondida, in order to elucidate the exchange relations and the material and symbolic resources that circulate within La Escondida, evidencing the specific conceptions regarding the forms of participation and social belonging within the framework of a political culture of clientelism.