"Squatter Life examines the subsistence strategies of the urban poor of Buenos Aires, examining how they obtain shelter and food, how they deal with the interpersonal violence that often surrounds them, and how these strategies interact within their relationships both within and outside of their neighborhoods. Javier Auyero and Sofia Servian argue that these strategies showcase not only hope and projects of collective improvement, but continual persistence in the face of seemingly insurmountable barriers. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork carried out for over thirty months in three Buenos Aires neighborhoods (La Matera, El Tala, and La Paz), Auyero and Servian center the material elements of marginality by focusing on the tactile work of the urban poor, including infrastructure construction, securing food, and how they build their homes. Individual chapters utilize interlocutors to investigate broader concepts such as the political actions of neighborhood brokers, the violent interactions of the neighborhoods they study, women's roles in soup kitchens and, subsequently, in fostering community, and neighborhood-wide collective action"--
