Building home futures: Materialities of construction and meanings of home in self-help building practices

Grubbauer’s chapter focuses on buildings which are by definition under permanent construction, the homes of self-help builders in the context of informal settlements in Latin American cities. These building constitute sites of ongoing, multiple, and simultaneous practices of dwelling, construction, and livelihood generation. Grubbauer argues how self-help construction provides valuable insights into wider debates around the interplay between material affordances and representational powers of building—not limited to developing countries. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Mexico City, she shows how the materialities of construction and meanings of home in self-help building practices are interrelated and shaped by both cultural norms and market structures in ways comparable to residential architecture in the Global North.