On wood and concrete: Residential habitat and inhabit of latin american migrants in the city of santiago

Based on two ethnographic experiences, one in a shantytown located at the periphery of Greater Santiago and another, still ongoing, in verticalization areas in the center of the city of Santiago, this article discusses the influence of materialities and housing spatialities in the configuration of inhabit of Latin American migrant living in the Metropolitan Region. It concludes that the habitat in the shantytown, whose spatiality and materiality are of a plastic order and in permanent construction, allows forms of spatial appropriation, of symbolic and material order, as the building and improvement of the housing proceed, while the habitat in residential verticalization zones whose materiality is rigid and preset, restricts the possibilities of spatial appropriation at the material level. However, in the intimacy of the house and at the symbolic and affective dimension there are forms of domestication of the residential space which are modeled by its migrant users.