Abstract

DI LORIO, Jorgelina  and  FARIAS, Mónica. Problematizing the space-subject-situation of the street relations: the case of the Popular Census in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2020, vol.43, n.2, pp.215-237.  Epub May 08, 2021. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v43n2.82807.

The paper describes the methodological and ethic-political dimensions of the Popular Census of Homeless People conducted in the City of Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 2017 and 2019. Law 3706 establishes that the government of the city has to conduct an "annual survey of homeless people and people at risk of becoming homeless that provides disaggregated information that helps to diagnose and come up with specific politics for different subgroups" (Government of the City of Buenos Aires, 2010). Given the fact that the Government of the City of Buenos Aires does not comply with that law, a group of social and political organizations alongside three advocacy rights government offices at the local level and homeless people organized and carried out two Popular Census of Homeless People.

We resort to the extended case method or situational analysis (Martínez, 2017) to present the Popular Census (pc) as a case to discuss the methodologies for counting homeless people and to make visible the collective organizational potential that functions as a tool for social and political change. The results of the 2017 and 2019 pcs are not discussed here, but we analyze the ways in which the pc exposes forms of social participation as well as different forms of violence exerted over the homeless people, achieved through the analysis of primary and secondary sources.

We conclude that the PC transcends what is called census-event and becomes a census-movement. That is a group of social, political, and neighborhood organizations that grows into a social actor with the ability to conduct actions before, during, and after the census-event. The census-movement becomes an alternative that objects the established ways of coding the complex problem of homelessness and provides the opportunity for processes of singularization to emerge (Giattari & Rolnik, 2013). These processes of singularization allow the appearance of sensitivities and creativity from where to produce resistant and desiring subjectivities.

Descriptores: Latin America, poverty, social research, violence.

Keywords : Buenos Aires; collective organization; homeless people; Popular Census; situational analysis.

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