Gas Service and Development Projects: Transforming Domestic Economies in a Squatting in Buenos Aires
Abstract
As a result of the growth of informal settlements nearby Buenos Aires metropolitan area, various development projects are currently carried out in poor neighborhoods to provide basic infrastructure as water, sanitation and energy supply. The logic of these interventions would be to transform informal users into official users of the given services.
This is the case of about ten neighborhoods – locally known as asentamientos – in Moreno (on the western outskirts of Buenos Aires) where I conducted my research. In the framework of a development project aimed at bringing a gas infrastructure and domiciliary connections to the service, my attention was focused on analyzing the transformations in the domestic sphere further to the implementation of a gas infrastructure. The project is built on the basis of a “voluntary” membership to the gas network, where the vecinos adopting the service are asked to pay for the connection by taking a microcredit which covers the necessary technical work within the plots and houses.
During a six-month fieldwork, I had the chance to observe different stages of the project (voluntary membership or not, connection work and credit recovery) and the subsequent transformations in household economy sphere. On the basis of a few selected cases (family life histories), this paper proposes an analysis of transformations within the household economy prior to the connection and once the connection is done. I will focus on how the gas installation confronts with the informal uses (practices), and how the credit payment confronts with the domestic organization of money.
Key words : domestic economy, popular economy, credit, service use
Bio
Magdalena Isaurralde is PhD candidate in Socio-economics at the École des Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) under the supervision of Isabelle Guérin. Her research focuses on the topic of microfinance to access public goods. She investigates both the political economy of microfinance as a phenomenon and the impact of microcredit on popular economy.
[email protected]
As a result of the growth of informal settlements nearby Buenos Aires metropolitan area, various development projects are currently carried out in poor neighborhoods to provide basic infrastructure as water, sanitation and energy supply. The logic of these interventions would be to transform informal users into official users of the given services.
This is the case of about ten neighborhoods – locally known as asentamientos – in Moreno (on the western outskirts of Buenos Aires) where I conducted my research. In the framework of a development project aimed at bringing a gas infrastructure and domiciliary connections to the service, my attention was focused on analyzing the transformations in the domestic sphere further to the implementation of a gas infrastructure. The project is built on the basis of a “voluntary” membership to the gas network, where the vecinos adopting the service are asked to pay for the connection by taking a microcredit which covers the necessary technical work within the plots and houses.
During a six-month fieldwork, I had the chance to observe different stages of the project (voluntary membership or not, connection work and credit recovery) and the subsequent transformations in household economy sphere. On the basis of a few selected cases (family life histories), this paper proposes an analysis of transformations within the household economy prior to the connection and once the connection is done. I will focus on how the gas installation confronts with the informal uses (practices), and how the credit payment confronts with the domestic organization of money.
Key words : domestic economy, popular economy, credit, service use
Bio
Magdalena Isaurralde is PhD candidate in Socio-economics at the École des Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) under the supervision of Isabelle Guérin. Her research focuses on the topic of microfinance to access public goods. She investigates both the political economy of microfinance as a phenomenon and the impact of microcredit on popular economy.
[email protected]