Research interests
- Urban process, urbanization, and gentrification
- Identity formation, citizenship, and social difference
- Collective action
- Labor and migration
Working papers
- Gentrification, Movements Against Displacement, and the Moral Economy of Urban Space: Evidence From Mexico City
Master's thesis
Inheriting the City: Movements Against Displacement and the Moral Economies of Urbanization in Mexico City
Rapid socioeconomic change, especially in the Global South, has made access to the city—to urban inhabitance and livelihood—increasingly critical for modern-day subsistence. However, in the face of gentrifying pressures, poor and working class residents often struggle to assert their right to urban space and protect themselves against displacement. While these processes—urbanization, development, gentrification, displacement, and resistance—have often been studied as discrete phenomena, we lack a sufficient understanding of how they are connected. I use the case of collective action by residents of two pueblos originarios (original towns) in Mexico City to interrogate how the experience of urbanization, the structure of urban development, the nature of gentrification, and the form of mobilization against displacement are importantly interconnected. I use the concept of moral economy to explore how these experiences have produced a cohesive identity among residents and collective understanding of their rights and responsibilities in urban space and of the proper role of the state in protecting those rights. The form of mobilization in these neighborhoods and the articulation of an inherited right to urban space flows from this particular moral economy of urbanization. These findings provide insights into how rapid urbanization in post-colonial societies might shape contemporary movements against displacement in the context of deepening inequality and accelerating gentrification in the urban Global South. Furthermore, this study contributes to our understanding of how salient identities in social movements are constructed and consolidated through the interplay of material, structural, and subjective processes.
Rapid socioeconomic change, especially in the Global South, has made access to the city—to urban inhabitance and livelihood—increasingly critical for modern-day subsistence. However, in the face of gentrifying pressures, poor and working class residents often struggle to assert their right to urban space and protect themselves against displacement. While these processes—urbanization, development, gentrification, displacement, and resistance—have often been studied as discrete phenomena, we lack a sufficient understanding of how they are connected. I use the case of collective action by residents of two pueblos originarios (original towns) in Mexico City to interrogate how the experience of urbanization, the structure of urban development, the nature of gentrification, and the form of mobilization against displacement are importantly interconnected. I use the concept of moral economy to explore how these experiences have produced a cohesive identity among residents and collective understanding of their rights and responsibilities in urban space and of the proper role of the state in protecting those rights. The form of mobilization in these neighborhoods and the articulation of an inherited right to urban space flows from this particular moral economy of urbanization. These findings provide insights into how rapid urbanization in post-colonial societies might shape contemporary movements against displacement in the context of deepening inequality and accelerating gentrification in the urban Global South. Furthermore, this study contributes to our understanding of how salient identities in social movements are constructed and consolidated through the interplay of material, structural, and subjective processes.
