Ana Maria Alvarez Rojas is a professor at the Center for Research in Social Sciences and Youth (CISJU) at the Silva Henríquez Catholic University in Santiago, Chile, and a visiting researcher at the Geography-Cities Laboratory within the EHGO research team, co-directed by Nicolas Verdier and Olivier Orain.
Dr. in Urban and Regional Planning (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, France) and a Ph.D. in Architecture in Urban Studies (Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile), Ana Maria Alvarez Rojas focuses her research on urban poverty, socio-spatial inequalities, and social housing.
See the list of her publications
She will give four lectures in January 2022:
Lecture 1 – After forty years of neoliberal model, how to think the universality of social rights in Chile?
In the Seminar “Building the Critique of Development” directed by Sylvie Capitant and Alain Musset.
The seminar will take place on Tuesday, January 18 in the Colloquium Building of the Condorcet Campus, room 307, from 2:30 to 4:30 pm.
Abstract
In Chile, neoliberal and consumerist logics have profoundly marked Chilean society in the last 40 years, producing modes of understanding the world that have reinforced the myth of equality of opportunity (Dubet, 2011) and the belief in individual effort as the key to progress. The state’s assistance to the poor population has deepened the dependence of the poor on state aid and increased the stigmatization of the poor, particularly by the middle classes. This last group, which is very heterogeneous, lives in an appearance of well-being, in the midst of great economic fragility. This model has had a profound socio-cultural impact on Chilean society, the extent of which is unknown, and which may become a major obstacle to the aspiration generated by the social revolt of 2019 and by the spirit that drives the Constitutional Convention.
Lecture 2 – “Migration and urban hardship in a group of migrants residing in the city of Santiago de Chile”
In the seminar “Transnational mobility, actors and devices: for a critical epistemology” led by Camille Schmoll (EHESS/ Géographie-cités)
The seminar will take place on the Condorcet Campus in room 50 of the colloquium building, from 12:30 to 2:30 pm.
Abstract
Although Chile is not among the Latin American countries that receive the highest percentages of migration from the same region or from the Caribbean, the proportion of inter-regional and Caribbean migrants has increased in this country in the last decade without the institutional and social conditions to guarantee their well-being. Numerous researches carried out on this subject, show that the urban is for migrants a central source of tensions among the set of difficulties that their migratory experience confronts them. In this presentation, we want to describe and analyze the main difficulties identified in a qualitative and exploratory study developed in 2020 with a group of migrants in the city of Santiago. The results confirm the presence of an early vulnerability of housing, racism and discrimination, while the migratory project appears as a central support.
Lecture 3 – “The test of the pandemic: structural challenge, individual responses, collective implications”
In the seminar “Critical Anthropology of Humanitarian Aid” directed by Laetitia Atlani-Duault, University of Paris (IRD). The seminar will take place on Tuesday, January 25 from 10:30 to 11:30 am.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected important areas of the functioning of contemporary societies, including the economy, physical and mental health of the population, education, work, mobility, among many other aspects. This presentation focuses on the results of a qualitative and exploratory study, developed in 2021 in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile, which had as a theoretical framework of reference the perspective of the sociology of the individual, in particular, the approach of tests and supports proposed by Danilo Martuccelli (2006a). The objective was to know the dimensions that Chileans and migrants of different gender and social origin recognized as particularly affected by the pandemic, and the responses they mobilized to face it. The main technique for collecting information was the semi-structured interview. The results show that the impact of the pandemic was influenced by life cycle, gender, national or migrant status, employment status, and various intersections between these dimensions. Central supports identified include strength of character, family and social ties, and the development of individual creativity and talents. In the case of the migrant population, the migration project appears to be the main support.
Lecture 4 – “Urban poverty and urban hardship among residents of Villa El Nacimiento, La Pintana municipality, Santiago Metropolitan Region, Chile”.
Seminar “Constructing the critique of development” directed by Sylvie Capitant and Alain Musset.
The conference will take place on January 26 at the IEDES (Institute of Development Studies of the Sorbonne), in Nogent sur Marne (10 mn from Châtelet) between 10am and 12pm, for the location follow the link https://iedes.pantheonsorbonne.fr/liedes-en-bref/acceder-campus
Abstract
The quantitative option of social housing policies developed in Chile in the 1990s and early 2000s, has generated multiple socio-urban problems for the beneficiaries and for the city as a whole. The nature of these problems is structural, since they correspond to macro political, economic, social and technical decisions. This observation led us to consider the urban experience of the inhabitants of Villa El Nacimiento, our case study and an example of the policies developed in this period, as a test. That is to say, a complex situation of historical and structural nature that complicates the lives of individuals from which they cannot escape and which forces them to mobilize responses. What components of this experience are more complex for those who live it? What mechanisms have these inhabitants developed to cope with it? Through a qualitative study carried out in 2020, we sought to find out what the essential components of the urban ordeal are for these inhabitants and the responses they have mobilized to deal with them. The results confirm, among other things, institutional abandonment and territorial stigmatization as central dimensions of this ordeal. And individual effort and home ownership as supports.
