In 2014 and 2015, thousands of predominantly Black and Indigenous migrants from Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru in Antofagasta, Chile, built settlements on land no one dared to inhabit: steep, arid hillsides prone to mudslides, fires, and deadly infrastructure. Women in these settlements, once dependent on domestic work and street vending, now spend their days leading housing committees with names like “United Americas” and “A Roof for a Latin People.” At first glance, these appear as spaces of defiant solidarity against racial exclusion, environmental risk, and poverty. Yet ethnography reveals something more complex: the autonomous organizing on display was orchestrated by the state. It was the result of a “participatory” and “intercultural” neoliberal resettlement program that required communities to elect leaders—nearly all of whom turned out to be women—and tasked these dirigentas with assessing vulnerability, surveying risk, and organizing eligible families into housing committees through which they could apply for subsidized housing elsewhere in the city. Although initially enthusiastic about resettlement, the work of managing displacement bound women to the terrain through deepening social, economic, and political ties, leading them to claim land they once denied any right to and demand urbanization over removal. In The Home at Its Limits, I show how women become political subjects through the contradictory labor they perform alongside the state, sustaining communities under its steady pressure to undo them.

Recent and forthcoming publications based on this project include:

Forthcoming (2026). «Home in Pandemic Time: Mental Illness, Violence, and the Moral Labor of Migrant Women Community Leaders in Northern Chile’s Campamentos.» Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad.

In Preparation. «Performing Disaster: Migration, Vulnerability, and Indigeneity in the Driest City in the World.» American Ethnologist.

2024. «Toward a Phenomenology of Politics: Vulnerability, Autonomy, and the Making of ‘Hard’ Corporeal Selves in Chile’s Migrant Campamentos.» Ethos 52 (2): 241-258.

2024. «A Multinational, Multiethnic Alternative in Chile’s Migrant Settlements.» In Plurinationalism from Below. Roger Merino, Romina Green Rioja, and Nayla Luz Vacarezza, eds. Special Issue, NACLA Report on the Americas. 

2023. «La primera ciudad latinoamericana: heroísmo en las luchas descoloniales de mujeres migrantes en Chile» [«The First Latin American City: Heroism in the Decolonial Struggles of Migrant Women in Chile.»] In Las fracturas del mármol: Heroicidades a contrapelo. Mónica González García, Sarah Moody, and Astrid Fernández de Castro, eds. Buenos Aires: CLACSO; La Habana: Editorial UH, pp. 271-302.

2023. «La ciudadanía desde el campamento migrante: neoliberalismo, racialización e indigenidad en Antofagasta, Chile» [«Citizenship from the Migrant Campamento: Neoliberalism, Racialization, and Indigeneity in Antofagasta, Chile.»] In: Ciudadanías: coexistencia y diferencia en Chile actual. Helene Risør, Marjorie Murray, and Tamara Hernández, eds. Santiago, Chile: Pehuén Editores, pp. 105-130. 

2023. «La primera ciudad latinoamericana: urbanismo descolonial en Los Arenales» [«The First Latin American City: Decolonial Urbanism in Los Arenales.»] In Los Arenales: hacia el derecho a la ciudad. José Francisco Vergara Perucich, Camillo Boano, and Martín Arias, eds. Santiago, Chile: Sangría Editora.

2022. «Navigating Apathy and Attacks in the Struggle for Migrant Rights in Chile.» In Chilean Politics Today. Romina Green Rioja and Joshua Frens-String, eds. Special Issue, NACLA Report on the Americas.