Between Surviving and Inhabiting: Subjectivity and Belonging in Dormitory Cities — Psychological Reflections on Exclusion, Territory, and Processes of Subjectivation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22456/2238-152X.153980Abstract
This theoretical essay, developed as a critical conceptual analysis, discusses the subjective effects of living in dormitory cities, taking the tension between surviving and inhabiting as its central axis. It examines how forms of urbanization that organize certain territories as places of return and reproduction of the labor force weaken the bond between subject and space, producing experiences of uprooting, non-belonging, and symbolic erasure. By articulating contributions from Environmental Psychology, Analytical Psychology, Ecopsychology, and Critical Social Psychology, the text understands inhabiting as a relational, symbolic, and ethical-political experience, crossed by racial, gender, and class inequalities. Based on this theoretical articulation, two analytical operators are proposed: the Paradox of Inhabiting, which names the condition of having a place to live without being able to constitute it as an existential territory, and Resistant Subjectivation, which describes micro-gestures of bonding, care, and rootedness produced in contexts marked by exclusion. It is argued that, although such forms of resistance sustain possible ways of existing, their scope is limited and does not replace the collective responsibility for building territories capable of welcoming, recognizing, and enabling belonging. By placing the subject at the center of the reflection on dormitory cities, the essay affirms belonging as a fundamental dimension of human existence, indicating that inequalities inscribed in the territory reverberate as symbolic wounds, even as everyday cracks for inhabiting persist.
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