The CCDP and ANSO department at the Graduate institute, Geneva are co-hosting a 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.
About the Speaker | Elena Butti
Dr. Elena Butti is a Research Fellow at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding of the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID) and a Research Associate at the UniGe Urban Hub. She holds a PhD and a Post-Doc from the University of Oxford. Her research interests revolve around youth, gangs, organized crime, informal housing, and migration at the Latin American urban margins. She regularly collaborates with international organizations on matters related to the Youth, Peace and Security agenda. As a visual anthropologist, she also uses participatory film as a research methodology. More on www.elenabutti.com.
About the DISCUSSANT | Minhua Ling
Minhua Ling is a sociocultural anthropologist and uses ethnography as a basis to explore three sets of related research interests: 1) the various forms of mobility and how they are shaped, experienced, and interpreted; 2) the (re)making of inequality in everyday life; and 3) the challenges to sustainable livelihood facing underprivileged individuals and communities. Prior to joining Geneva Graduate Institute, Dr. Ling was a 2022-23 Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor with tenure between 2013 and 2022. At Geneva Graduate Institute, Dr. Ling teaches courses and supervises theses in the areas of mobility, urbanization, food and health, socio-ecological sustainability, and sociocultural transformation in China and East Asia in addition to anthropological research methodology.