The CCDP and ANSO department at the Graduate Insitute, Geneva are co-hosting at seminar discussing Gangs, Migration, and Urban Extractivism at the Margins: The housing market of an informal settlement in Medellín, Colombia with Dr. Elena Butti and Prof. Minhua Ling.
About the Research
Informal settlements – often referred to as ‘invasion’, ‘occupation’, or ‘self-built’ settlements – are key drivers of Latin American cities; rapid expansion, providing housing for thousands, primarily internally displaced people and migrants who cannot afford formal accommodations. Residents typically settle on unsuitable private or public land, constructing homes from salvaged materials while facing a lack of basic public services and the constant threat of eviction from the state.
In Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, this dynamic is intensified by rapid urban growth and a severe housing crisis, exacerbated by large-scale Venezuelan migration and the expansion of tourism and expatriate industries. Traditionally, self-built neighborhoods in Medellín have been spaces of solidarity and collective action, where residents organized themselves, pooling labor and resources to construct homes and essential infrastructure. In recent years, however, what began as spontaneous efforts to claim the right to housing has transformed into an economic opportunity for criminal gangs seeking new revenue streams.
Drawing on ethnographic research in one of Latin America’s largest informal settlements—a self-built community of 30,000 people in northern Medellín—this paper examines how, over the past two decades, criminal gangs have co-opted and commercialized land plotting, housing construction, sales, and rentals in these areas. The paper explores the emergence, organization, and regulation of this illegal housing market. Using Verónica Gago’s concept of ‘neoliberalism from below’ (Gago, 2014) and Gago and Mezzadra’s (2017) notion of ‘urban extractivism’ (see also García Jerez, 2019), I argue that these gang-controlled informal housing markets represent the neoliberal capture of decades of popular self-organization. In a distorted form, they mirror the broader financialization of the real estate sector.