Slums, villas miseria and barriadas: why terms matter

Building upon previous debates surrounding the English-language term slum, this article argues that slum stigmatizes the spaces and subjects that it refers to not only because it evokes nineteenth-century imaginaries of pauperism and crime but also for the sweeping gesture that it implies; for its refusal to observe in depth the experience of those who inhabit the spaces at stake and the interests associated. Intended as a universal term, “slum” can refer to such disparate urban typologies as inner-city high-rise tenements, low-rise overcrowded housing, and peripheral shantytowns, which empties it of specific meaning and converts it into an abstract container on to which external agendas are projected. To further demonstrate this point, the article reads slum alongside the seemingly analogous yet more specific Argentine and Peruvian terms villas miseria, barriadas and pueblos jóvenes, fields of dispute whose meanings have been contested by different actors, including residents, from the outset.