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Exploring an ever-dynamic, often-struggling city.

Techniques of absencedescribe some of the potentially anti‐deliberative practices that haunt recently widespread participation‐based governance schemes. Techniques of absence remove certain kinds of people – on a spatialised basis – from crucial 'democratic' conversations. To illustrate these, I use ethnographic accounts from the implementation of a citywide participatory budgeting programme in three neighbourhoods across Buenos Aires, Argentina, modelled after the vaunted budgeting process pioneered in Porto Alegre, Brazil since 1989. I position absencing as part of an emergent urban governmentality related to participation. This allows for an analysis of the Buenos Aires participatory budget across very different areas of the city: Puerto Madero, Abasto, and La Boca. Discussion centres on dynamics of participation and non‐participation observed during extensive fieldwork in 2004 and 2005. The research aimed to establish intense co‐presence through participant‐observation, yet instead yielded an ethnography of absences, entailing analysis of how, why and with what consequences there was lacking participation in this participatory experiment. The phenomenon of absencing points to an emergent governmentality that enables ironically pernicious, territorialised regulation of difference, which must be countered to fulfil the promise of such widespread experiments.

This paper focuses on two Buenos Aires neighborhoods that face displacement pressures. Building on research about urban mobilization in a range of cities, this paper highlights how collaboration can vary in its configuration and orientation at the neighborhood level, despite similar circumstances. Data include ethnographic excerpts from the experiences of residents who fight to remain in their homes but ultimately leave, which trace out distinct neighborhood trajectories—moving onward and moving away. These accounts indicate divergence in how residents respond to displacement threats due to the differently situated, networked nature of the two sites as political spaces. Moreover, distinct logics of collaboration inflect ongoing displacement politics in the threatened neighborhoods as well as in the destinations of displaced residents.

AbstractTo explain cross‐class spatial relations in 'post‐neoliberal' Buenos Aires, this article develops the notion of microcitizenships, defined as group‐specific quasi‐legal relationships with the local state, entailing both recognition and service provision in order to grant exclusive yet temporary rights to particularized legitimate uses of urban space. This conceptualization contrasts in particular with prominent theorizations of liberal, insurgent and flexible citizenship. Microcitizenships capture the newly fractious, rather than merely fragmented, nature of social rights after the adoption of more inclusive and nationalist discourses in the recovery period following the neoliberal crisis of 2001–02. Argentina has been an icon of both neoliberal and post‐neoliberal globalization, making its capital city ideal for the study of changing forms of belonging in the new political–economic context. Taking three central neighborhoods redeveloped in the neoliberal period (1989–2001) which were landmarks of fragmentation, I find they are now characterized by clashes among groups negotiating very different claims of legitimate presence in the same sites. I use ethnographic and interview‐based evidence to outline three types of conflicting membership: 'excessive', 'weekend' and 'transposable' citizens. All employ post‐neoliberal idioms but invoke legitimizations specifically from disparate geographic scales to stake their claims. Thus, amid inclusionary rhetoric, ironically there are microcitizenships that embody spatio‐temporally circumscribed, precarious and especially fractious forms of belonging in the city. Closing considerations address how this concept resonates with a range of contemporary urban contexts.RésuméCet article explique les rapports spatiaux entre classes dans le Buenos Aires 'post‐néolibéral'. Pour ce faire, il utilise la notion de micro‐citoyennetés, définie comme les relations quasi‐juridiques qu'un groupe spécifique entretient avec l'État local, ce qui suppose à la fois une reconnaissance et la fourniture de services afin que puissent être octroyés des droits exclusifs, mais temporaires, à un usage légitime et particularisé de l'espace urbain. Ce concept diffère notamment des principales théorisations de la citoyenneté libérale, 'insurgée' et 'flexible'. Les micro‐citoyennetés restituent la dissension – plus que la simple fragmentation – qui caractérise les droits sociaux après que des discours prônant l'inclusion et le nationalisme ont été adoptés lors du redressement qui a suivi la crise du néolibéralisme de 2001–2002. L'Argentine a été une icône de la mondialisation néolibérale et post‐néolibérale, faisant de sa capitale un cas idéal pour étudier les formes évolutives d'appartenance dans le nouveau contexte politico‐économique. L'étude de trois quartiers du centre, réaménagés et symboliques de la fragmentation à l'époque néolibérale (1989–2001), révèle qu'ils se caractérisent à présent par des heurts entre groupes négociant des revendications très différentes d'une présence légitime dans des lieux identiques. Des éléments ethnographiques et issus d'entretiens permettent de déterminer trois types d'appartenance antagonistes: citoyens 'sans bornes', 'pour le week‐end' et 'transposables'. Tous sont de style post‐néolibéral, mais invoquent des échelons géographiques différents pour justifier leur légitimité et leurs demandes. Ainsi, au milieu d'une rhétorique d'inclusion, on trouve paradoxalement des micro‐citoyennetés qui incarnent des formes d'appartenance à la ville qui sont à la fois circonscrites sur un plan spatio‐temporel, précaires et particulièrement acrimonieuses. Pour finir, sont abordées les manières dont ce concept s'accorde avec divers contextes urbains contemporains.