Building Citizenship: The Struggle for Housing in Eastern Mexico City

The City as a Political Space

According to Henri Lefebvre (1978: 26), the “urban fabric” is the framework for a “way of life,” and it is on this basis that phenomena of another order, another level—that of social and cultural life—appear. The term “urban fabric” synthesizes social tensions and social struggles, economic and political differentiation, inequality and social inequity, and a particular notion of the subject and society. Urban space is configured both individually and collectively through everyday practices and political, social and economic ties while at the same time marking and configuring the subjects who reproduce it (Harvey, 2003).

In the light of the arguments raised by Lefebvre (1978) and Harvey (1998; 2003), it can be said that the production of urban space not only involves urban plans and development programs but solidifies the relationships among individuals, the state, and society by defining areas of coexistence, forms of encounter, separation, and differentiation, and the distribution of goods and services. Thus understood, the urban space is a social and political space that embodies the differences between and defines the forms of participation of the various social groups, reaffirming schemes of social power. Clara Irazábal (2006: 74) argues that spatial practices represent one of the hegemonic means through which elites build their status and exercise their economic and symbolic power over societies while at the same time developing mechanisms that redefine and rebuild their communities. The material and symbolic dynamics of the socio-spatial organization of Latin American cities accounts for the accumulation of social disadvantages for certain groups that lack access to basic goods and services and are vulnerable and excluded from urban life. These groups practice a kind of citizenship that O’Donnell (2008) characterizes as “low-intensity.”

In this regard, Roberts (2010) examines three trends of exclusion that are reproduced in cities across Latin America and that directly affect the construction of urban citizenship. First, cities have ceased to be the nuclei of opportunities that they were during the 1960s and 1970s, mainly because of precarious working conditions and limited possibilities of entering the labor market. Deregulation and the reduction of government employment have directly affected formal employment and its informal counterpart. This has meant a reduction of job opportunities for sectors of the population that cannot find a place in the high-tech economy or the modern services industry (Roberts, 2010). In Mexico City, the outsourcing of the economy that began in the 1980s meant that the formal and modern sector increased its share in the gross domestic product (GDP) while creating very few skilled jobs. At the same time, the informal sector increased significantly, as did precarious, unstable, low-paid jobs without employment benefits (Pradilla, 2005: 90).

Second, cities reinforce and synthesize class structures, and the socio-spatial distribution of income evidences the huge inequality between the ruling classes and the rest of the population. This manifests itself in the high concentration of wealth among the upper classes (Roberts, 2010). In the case of Mexico City, Gonzalo Saraví (2008: 99) argues that “the interaction of agents in the urban space is deeply affected by an entrenched inequality in the social structure, which has seeped deeply into the spatial structure.” This makes economic polarization more evident.

Third, big business that attracts the development of both commercial, residential, and services-based urban infrastructure and the liberalization of the housing market have fostered new trends of exclusion (Roberts and Wilson, 2009). Real estate dynamics have promoted the creation of gated communities aimed at higher-income groups that enjoy exclusive services such as sports, better public services, and protective surveillance. The increase in numbers of these gated communities has encouraged small-scale segregation, reducing the opportunities for the interaction between people of different social groups that is one of the tools for the configuration of a shared sense of citizenship (Roberts, 2010).

While residential polarization in Mexico City is less than in other Latin American metropolises, this has not prevented the creation of elite neighborhoods along with poor and marginalized ones (Ward, 2004). Duhau and Giglia (2008) argue that Mexico City is becoming a fragmented city in which the separation of socio-spatial functions and elements is not of a large scale because different socioeconomic strata and residential neighborhoods spread and mix in small areas—luxury residential areas in very poor neighborhoods and shantytowns in upper-class areas. This type of development is possible only because of “walls and fences, barriers that separate and secure islands of wealth and exclusivity against poverty” (Duhau and Giglia, 2008: 87). The growth and development of the city have been undertaken not with any comprehensive or articulating criteria in mind but rather under the direction of real estate capital in its quest for profit via the commodification of land and social housing, deepening the social and spatial separation of urban subjects.

These trends of exclusion are coupled with the stigmatization of poor districts. According to Wacquant (2007), one direct consequence of stigmatization and the erection of barriers to the full participation of subjects in the public sphere is a split in the exercise of citizenship. Vulnerability is not concentrated in the economic field but creates difficulties for active participation in institutions and social life. However, while the production of cities has generated dynamics that both fragment space and reduce meeting places and block full social and political participation, urban space is still crucial for the negotiation of citizenship and governance (Irazábal, 2008). Conditions of poverty and vulnerability are therefore not the only battlefield but the basis of the struggle for participation and legitimate use of the city, acknowledging a set of urban and social rights that do not depend on membership in the nation-state. Holston (2008) argues that the experience of living in marginalized urban areas and particularly conflicts over housing and land constitute—in both content and substance—a new urban citizenship. This citizenship is associated not necessarily with the struggle for the recognition of working rights with which citizenship was traditionally linked but with the struggle for the right to the city.

In this regard, urban citizenship is built not exclusively on strategies that allow access to public goods and services but on ones that take shape in the redefinition and recognition of subjects as political actors with possibilities of transformation and rights that are nontransferable and undeniable. Therefore, the construction of urban citizenship is understood as the relational process that focuses on political and social practices of domination and resistance and determines access to public resources and forms of social belonging. This is a long-term process that is part of the tension between traditional political practices or clientelism ² and the struggle for rights, which involves both the appropriation and transformation of space and the transformation of subjects and the relationships that produce it.

Social Organization in Iztapalapa

The current socio-spatial differentiation pattern in Mexico City began in the 1950s with the movement west and south of wealthier groups from the central area and the relocation of the poor east and north (Ward, 2004). Iztapalapa became a residential area for the low-income population and grew into a sort of backyard of the city—the part in which illegal takeovers of plots took place and in which, for a long time, the main urban landfills were located. It lacks basic urban services, is short of housing, and in recent decades has become one of the most important criminal hotspots in the city.

Nowadays, Iztapalapa accounts for 8 percent of the city’s territory, has 1,815,786 inhabitants, and is limited in its access to basic goods and services (INEGI, 2010). Its accelerated population growth during the 1960s and 1970s was not accompanied by corresponding urban planning. Instead, it underwent irregular urbanization through land invasions and illegal sales of ejido plots. ³ While during the past two decades it has improved considerably, particularly in terms of land ownership regulation, the expansion of the system of basic urban services (mainly electricity, piped water, and drainage), and collective infrastructure, the population continues to face substantial precariousness. According to the Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy—CONEVAL), 37.3 percent of the population lives in poverty, 3.2 percent extreme and 34.1 percent moderate (CONEVAL, 2010). Much of Iztapalapa is still characterized by housing growth based on informal settlement (Figure 1).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The eastern part of Iztapalapa. (Photo Luisa F. Rodríguez Cortés, 2009)

Two political processes have been key in the construction of citizenship in Iztapalapa. The first is the emergence and consolidation of the popular urban movement during the 1970s and 1980s. Although the movement was present across the city, in Iztapalapa it was characterized by a powerful demand for access to housing because of the existence in the area of many vacant lots belonging to the city and other public entities that were suitable for invasion and subsequent construction and regularization. The importance of the popular urban movement is that it managed to leave its mark on the political practices and relations of urban social organizations demanding improvement of living conditions for the less-favored sectors of the population. Patricia Ramírez Kuri (2007: 93) argues that in Mexico City “changes in terms of an overcrowded and deficit-ridden citizenship began during the second half of the 20th century, particularly after the 1960s, promoted by struggles, social movements and forms of participation that involved actors experiencing varying degrees of social and political exclusion.” The movement declined after the 1990s with urban democratic changes and the reduction of the gap between urban social organizations and state entities, political parties, and electoral processes (Coulomb, 1995). Nowadays, many of the urban social organizations that made up the movement continue to serve as important tools for access to public resources and recognition of the rights of the disadvantaged.

The second important political process is the partisan political dispute that emerged with the 1997 mayoral election and the choosing of congressional leaders in 2000. Iztapalapa quickly became one of the strongholds of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution—PRD), and this change was accompanied by a deep struggle between its two dominant factions. The internal division of the PRD has polarized the population and generated an electoral environment marked by the differential distribution of patronage and state resources. According to Álvarez (2006), this has led to the blossoming and return of political practices such as neocorporatism and new forms of patronage. In this context, organizations that demand housing have remained pertinent given their ability to offer residential alternatives (in temporary encampments) ⁴ and to promote opportunities for self-help housing construction and obtain funding for housing from the local and/or federal government. Torrez and Eibenschutz (2006) argue that organizations demanding housing have played a crucial role not only in gaining access to a specific good but also in the configuration of social bonds, the social production of habitat, the physical and social construction of cities, and the reproduction of practices and political codes of both confrontation and negotiation with the state. The importance of these organizations therefore hinges on their ability to, on the one hand, influence the local process through social and political demands, management practices, and negotiations with state institutions and, on the other, transform urban space through the acquisition of basic urban services and access to living quarters.

Understanding citizenship as a process that is set up in a collective space and in accordance with the demands and needs of the urban context forces us to rethink the concept and requires an empirical review of the practices and political relationships being built by social organizations. Below is the case of a housing-demanding organization that I shall call Asociación Renovación (Association Renewal) based on in-depth interviews and ethnographic work across three premises belonging to the association: a self-help-built housing unit and two encampments awaiting construction. ⁵

Building Citizenship on the Basis of Social Organization

Asociación Renovación emerged at the beginning of the 1980s as a result of the eviction of a group of land invaders from an ejido plot south of Iztapalapa. Those affected were relocated to a plot donated by the city government, and the organization grew out of their demands for housing support. Under the leadership of Laura Díaz ever since, the association has been receiving homeless families and individuals and providing them security and stability through access to low-cost rooms (in a makeshift camp) with the hope of a house or apartment in the long term. However, living in the camps is not easy. There is no charge for housing except a weekly fee of 5–20 pesos, but there is no consistent access to water or electricity, the space allocated to each family (usually a room) is quite small, and the floor is earthen. According to Gloria (40 years old, camp resident, interview, February 20, 2009),

It has its pros and cons; [my life] changed in the sense that, previously, I did not have safe housing and now I have it, thank God, now I have it. . . . There are situations in which you become so stressed, you get depressed. Suddenly, with all the shortcomings and all that, you do resent it, and it makes you ill and depressed. . . . If I had the resources, who knows if I’d be living in a camp, because I would like to live otherwise. My children would live differently. And you say, I’d like to have a “normal house,” a “normal life.”

The few opportunities to obtain housing make this the best alternative in the situation of extreme precariousness and vulnerability faced by many families. The practices and imaginaries that shape urban citizenship are produced in this context, and in the long term they entail a struggle to ameliorate the conditions of insecurity and gain access to a basic right such as housing. This struggle is expressed in the public sphere in terms of a set of political codes learned from the popular urban movement and modified with the political changes in the city and the district.

The practices of organizations demanding housing and the popular urban movement in Mexico City were initially characterized by confrontation. Their actions involved closing down avenues and engaging in marches, demonstrations, and rallies in front of government buildings and were meant to spread awareness and press the authorities into solving specific problems. During the early years, the organizational momentum belonged to small, unstable, legally unregistered, and short-lived organizations guided by a strategy of confrontation with the state rather than negotiation (Álvarez, 2004). These practices are still very common, since they constitute a means to publicize a problem that is initially treated as private. “Unfortunately, that’s the only way to make the government listen to you. Unfortunately, sometimes you need all that to be heard. We closed down [Avenida Periférico] and the district finally did something; we were moved to that plot” (Cecilia, 53 years old, housing unit resident, interview, July 18, 2009).

In addition to publicizing a specific problem, this kind of practice adds a political aspect to the demands made and opens the door to problem management and the negotiation of solutions with the corresponding institutions. As Álvarez (2004) points out, starting in the 1990s, urban social organizations in Mexico City perfected their management and negotiation practices while maintaining autonomy and independence from the state. In other words, while they sought to negotiate with state institutions, they also took the initiative to gain access to public goods and services and exercise their rights.

For example, obtaining services such as electricity, water, and drainage is the result of community work; despite their being basic rights, access to them began erratically and through the autonomous work of the organizations. Even self-help-built temporary camps eventually supported by government entities are the result of the organization’s initiatives. This promotes a nonpaternalistic relationship between these subjects and the state and reproduces a proactive way of inhabiting the city. It is the subjects in the organizational process who recognize basic services (water, electricity, and drainage) as rights even though they are not guaranteed by the state. Gabriela (45 years old, camp resident, interview, June 14, 2009) described the situation as follows:

We did not expect anything from the district, nothing, nothing. We go there to ask for drainage, and they say, “Yeah, but we don’t know when we can bring the stuff.” No way. “You lend me the truck, and I’ll get the people to go get the pipes, don’t you worry.” And the people, women, men, teens, would get the pipes; this or that lady would send her son or whomever she could. . . . And on Saturday and Sunday, rain or shine, we’d all go to the ditch to dig. There was no machinery, because it broke, so we’d shovel, men and women, teenagers, shoveling, because if the machine did not arrive in time we still had to get it done.

The initiative taken by Asociación Renovación was a way of dealing with precariousness and neglect. However, these proactive practices did not involve the transfer of responsibilities to the organization, as proposed by the discourse of neoliberal democracy (in which nongovernmental organizations and civil society assume responsibilities formerly considered the state’s [Dagnino, 2003]). In this case, initiative arises from the recognition of a set of rights under the guidance of the state, and since the latter does not guarantee the former and has left the less-favored sectors in oblivion, the organization undertakes the actions necessary to obtain access to public goods and services.

Asociación Renovación pursues access to housing through self-help construction and the management of support from government institutions. Self-help construction is done on premises obtained by the organization through collective purchases based on individual contributions or illegal land occupation. Building is funded with personal resources, since families usually do not receive any credit support from state institutions. Members of the organization collaborating in the construction process play an essential part in the transformation of space and the strengthening of social networks and trust. As a result, obtaining housing is an uneven and lengthy process in which, although some families manage to finish their homes in a short period, others must bear delays that prolong their stay in precarious conditions and exclude them from access to housing even though they are members of an organization that demands the exercise of this right. Enrique (58 years old, interview, December 6, 2009), a member of Asociación Renovación, said:

On the first plot we got to, we did the work. We dug the ditches for the drain pipes, right? And there are photos—we have pictures—where we made these huge ditches to put the drain pipes in and all, so we participated in construction that should have been done by the government, right? . . . They should have helped us with that, but they didn’t.

Building self-financed housing evidences a rift with the state and imposes a proactive relationship on the subjects, given their basic need. This creates a double dynamic in relations between the organization and state institutions that is characterized by tension between the organization’s initiative and autonomy and dependence on the state for access to public goods and resources such as drainage, water, and electricity.

Besides building self-financed housing, the organization also seeks to obtain support such as loans for construction or access to already built housing. This requires pressure, management, and negotiation with the relevant institutions and also marches, demonstrations, closing down of avenues, and camping by or organizing rallies in front of government offices. The impact of various forms of pressure depends on organizational capacity; the long-term constancy of these actions is key. Here a notion of struggle specific to urban social organizations—persistence as a form of resistance—becomes manifest. The organization’s potential achievements depend on the capacity of leaders to manage and create possibilities of negotiation with institutions by translating their demands into a discourse of rights. As Gloria (40 years old, camp resident, February 20, 2009) put it, pressure on and demands of state institutions are the first step toward negotiation and the acquisition of required services and resources:

Sometimes you do win; we go downtown to the main square on marches and people join, all of those of us who are low-income earners get together. Yes, we have achieved many things, but only if you insist, because if we go one time and they don’t heed us, we come back the next morning and stand by some other exit, and so that’s what we do: one exit after another until they listen to us and give us what we need.

Thus the construction of citizenship occurs in the articulation and overlapping of practices that would appear to be conflicting (confrontation and negotiation) but in everyday life shape the acknowledgment of rights.

As a whole, these organizations’ demand for housing modifies urban space either through the establishment of camps that shed light on the population’s precariousness and poverty or through the gradual construction of permanent homes. Similarly, their constant demand—via marches, sit-ins, avenue closures, and negotiation with state entities—changes the urban fabric and seeks to integrate traditionally excluded subjects into the public sphere as valid actors participating in city life. In other words, the demand for and recognition of a basic need such as housing and its management by social organizations alter the urban space at the same time that they allow for the configuration of a notion of rights among marginalized subjects. However, the urban citizenship that results from this long, uneven, and contradictory process takes a variety of forms.

Forms of Citizenship and Areas of Inclusion

Negotiation and management skills in the pursuit of housing are mostly acquired by leaders rather than by all members of the grassroots movement. In the case of Asociación Renovación, it is the leaders who have the deeper knowledge of the government structure—what bodies manage which resources, where one can receive support, and other details needed to establish a relationship with the state and its institutions. The bases carry out acts of pressure and confrontation, promoting a sense of struggle even though the process is one of negotiation between institutions and organization leaders.

The organization has a hierarchical structure whose nuclear and administrative center is made up of women, most sharing family ties (cousins, aunts, sisters-in-law). It is they who have become conversant with negotiation and the management of the group’s demands of the authorities, and it is through their work that the organization has achieved the legal recognition, identification, and instrumentalization of its demand for housing. Despite the preeminence of women at the helm, gender demands have not, however, reached the political and social agenda of Asociación Renovación. Therefore, the differences in the construction of citizenship lie mainly in the distinction between the bases and the leaders. ⁶

The heightened role of the association’s leaders has established exchange ties and clientelism with local political patronage. These do not involve a direct exchange of votes for favors but follow the specific guidelines and time frames arising from the relationship between politicians and the organization. As Auyero (2000) points out regarding other Latin American cases, these exchange relationships are reproduced in daily life from bases such as solidarity, friendship, and loyalty.

For the bases the construction of citizenship is founded, first of all, on political socialization among members and between them and the leaders, which allows them to lay the groundwork of a discourse that acknowledges and demands rights for the group. In this sense, it is in the collective space that a discourse of rights exceeding the goods and services received by the group is shaped, positioning the subjects in the public sphere as actors with rights. As Claudia (46 years old, housing unit resident, interview, July 14, 2009) explained, this is the case with regard to housing construction funds such as government subsidies:

Sometimes the district will say—I don’t know—that it helped us with machinery, helped us build the roads to bring materials in, or anything, but it’s not like they really help you much . . . because they just don’t let go of the subsidies. They always steal the subsidies, when we know that they are there and we are all entitled to them.

The construction of citizenship among the bases also depends on the possibility of channeling demands through the leaders and “knowing someone who knows what I don’t know,” which facilitates access to public resources by reproducing a discourse based on rights even though its practice may not necessarily take place at the citizenship level. Arguably, this is where progress toward the consolidation of urban citizenship often stops, since the majority of members remain as a social and political base for exercising pressure but do not manage their own rights.

The political practices of the organization do not follow a linear process but overlap and articulate: some come from the leaders and others from the grassroots. Both are characterized by a discourse in which rights are understood not as an end but as a means of struggle for access to basic goods and for the transformation of the public sphere and the inclusion of traditionally excluded subjects. Thus advances in the management of claims and rights education contrast with the reproduction of a differentiated urban citizenship in which grassroots members remain subordinate to the leaders and isolated from the negotiation process.

An additional aspect central to the construction of citizenship is the sense of belonging that allows subjects to see themselves as actively enjoying rights within the social structure. The limits of social belonging are increasingly marked by inequality and poverty, which leave subjects profoundly vulnerable and on the verge of exclusion. In this scenario, social organizations serve as support networks and offer alternatives in the context of the extreme social insecurity and vulnerability that affects the population of Mexico City’s eastern suburbs. As Cecilia pointed out, these support networks make life in the camps more bearable: “Look, living in the camp is something very nice, like it’s a close-knit family, a very large family. . . . And it’s very nice. If there’s a party, everyone goes to the party. If there’s a death, everyone helps the bereft shoulder their pain; everyone cooperates, to get food and whatnot.”

Belonging to an organization that demands housing allows low-income subjects to become part of a set of support networks that provide basic protection against daily problems and needs. In this regard, Bayón, Roberts, and Saraví (1998) argue that, given the lack of state support and the increased vulnerability of much of the population, social protection begins to emerge in informal areas. But to what extent can these networks of trust, solidarity, etc., overcome disadvantages in other areas (Bayón, 2012), especially when there they do not exclude conflict between the leaders and the bases? In the case of Asociación Renovación, disputes are the result of, among other things, the differential distribution of resources, compulsory attendance at political events (marches, sit-ins, or group tasks), and the process of obtaining deeds to the dwellings. These tensions arise in a scenario of domination that, without being authoritarian, does determine social relations. To this we might add the fact that, once grassroots members finally find definitive accommodation, relations within the group and the social ties supporting these networks of solidarity and confidence weaken or even break down. With the passage of time and the attainment of goals, subjects feel less responsibility to the organization and participate less and less in collective spaces. This is partly because making demands on the government entities is exhausting and costly. As Ligia (41 years old, housing unit resident, interview, September 25, 2009) put it,

Even though I worked then . . . if they told us we had to be in the Zócalo [the main square] at 5 p.m. to march, I asked for permission and left work at 5; my husband did the same, we were dating back then. . . . Eventually we decided we were tired of going out, cleaning, of always being the same people doing it, because there are others who just don’t.

We observed increasing apathy among the housing unit residents when it came to the organization’s political activities; they argued that they were tired and had done their part and now it was up to others. In a nutshell, they had already achieved their goals and did not see why they should continue fighting. However, even after acquiring housing, many families continued to live in social and economic conditions of precariousness and deprivation. Access to a definitive place to live did not guarantee the improvement of other social, labor, education, or health conditions. The organization does have families with formal employment, a degree of social security, and access to high school education for the new generations, but it has others that are unemployed or doing informal jobs, without health care, and there is a high incidence of school-leaving at an early age because of the need for additional sources of income.

The breakdown in support networks and the increasing distance among members of the organization once their goals (access to housing) have been accomplished is framed by a context in which families remain vulnerable while the solidarity networks of the organization disappear. The configuration of a sense of belonging in these spaces is therefore a response to situational spaces and processes; networks of solidarity and support are strengthened through daily situations and practices such as community work and life in the camp and tend to dissolve because of weariness and the high cost of upkeep. Thus while the organizational space gives shape to the acknowledgment of the other as an equal and a shared social experience—both basic processes of citizenship construction—their scope is limited and situation-based. It acquires real weight only when it is articulated with a system of citizen relations and political practices that go beyond the situational context.

Final Thoughts

The construction of citizenship that takes place in the outskirts of eastern Mexico City does so under conditions of exclusion and vulnerability resulting from the materialization of the capitalist production model. In this context, the urban space is characterized by fragmentation and differentiation based on social polarization, which reproduces a profoundly unequal material and symbolic structure. As a result, the construction of urban citizenship faces great challenges and responds to specific mechanisms created by the subjects who reside in these areas. It is meant to lessen their precarious conditions and provide access to public goods and services, building windows of inclusion and belonging at the local level.

The study of urban social organizations shows that the accumulation of social disadvantages constitutes the context and content of political practices and, therefore, citizen practices. The accumulation of social, economic, and political disadvantages reproduces socio-spatial forms of inequality that block the participation of subjects in social institutions and their life in the city. Urban space reproduces a deeply exclusionary citizenship model drawn, mainly, from state policy. Subjects are constantly trying to modify it, and it is to deal with these conditions of inequality that urban social organizations have sought to rethink relationships and political practices, open up inclusion mechanisms, and create alternatives for gaining access to the flow of public resources via both institutional and informal arrangements. In the case of Asociación Renovación, the organization has played a key role in gaining access to certain public goods and in the configuration of a discourse of rights among the less-favored sectors of society. Here the construction of urban citizenship has not responded to the guidelines of classical and liberal theory based on the individual but is linked directly to organizational forms.

It is in the common sphere that subjects learn what the prevailing practices and political relations are, create support networks, and become part of the community, something they would not be able to achieve individually. This process builds a notion of struggle against the state by asserting a grassroots demand for something that these subjects have a right to but have been excluded from. This notion of rights and struggle for the recognition of subjects as valid actors in the city constitutes an urban citizenship that is nevertheless weak and precarious because the organizational space strengthens the leaders and political mediators but keeps the base members subordinate. It is the leaders who have the ability to negotiate and manage the demands of the group against those of institutions, but it is also in such acts of mediation that exchange relationships and clientelism are embodied.

We can therefore speak of an urban citizenship that is fragmented, takes shape from different angles, and is different for bases and leaders. The government has taken targeted action in response to particular demands without creating shared social conditions that back a broader kind of citizenship. Similarly, as long as the popular urban movement remains noncohesive and social demands remain the specific problems of particular groups (the homeless, the unemployed, those lacking health care or pensions), the construction of citizenship will remain fragmented and will largely depend on the role of local leaders. These factors constitute an obstacle to the construction of a fairer and more egalitarian urban citizenship in Mexico City. Citizenship construction based on urban social organizations still has a long way to go. Organizations promote partial integration, redefine the role of subjects, and encourage the fight for and recognition of basic rights, but they do not effect change in the wide-ranging conditions of poverty and vulnerability.