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Tales of Deviance and Control: On Space, Rules, and Law in Squatter Settlements
Author(s) -
Van Gelder JeanLouis
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
law and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1540-5893
pISSN - 0023-9216
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5893.2010.00406.x
Subject(s) - principle of legality , human settlement , variety (cybernetics) , population , deviance (statistics) , diversity (politics) , state (computer science) , sociology , political science , law , political economy , geography , statistics , demography , mathematics , archaeology , algorithm , artificial intelligence , computer science
In Latin American cities, around a third of the urban population lives in tenure situations that can be designated as informal, yet variation in the ways and extent to which these arrangements do not comply with law is extensive. Furthermore, informal dwellers often employ a variety of strategies to legitimize and ultimately legalize their tenure, implying a dynamic rather than a static relationship between illegality and legality. Conceiving of land tenure in dichotomous terms, as simply being either legal or illegal, therefore, fails to reflect this diversity, nor does it capture the evolving nature of the relationship between informal settlements and the state system. Drawing from the development of squatter settlements in Buenos Aires, this article proposes an alternative perspective and shows how settlements alternate strategies of noncompliance with adaptation to the state legal system to gradually increase their legality.