From self-building to trade training. Bioconstruction female workers in an emergent labor market

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between urban transformations, bioconstruction, and gender through an analysis of the career paths of bioconstruction female workers. In a context of urban sprawl and economic and housing crises, alternative construction methods in the city's peripheries not only present themselves as a means of accessing housing for impoverished middle-class sectors, but also as a workspace where women acquire a trade in a historically male-dominated field. Using an ethnographic approach based on interviews and participant observation of construction projects, the article reconstructs the transition from self-construction to the development of a trade among women living in an area of ​​urban expansion in Mar del Plata. It also investigates the meanings and values ​​they attribute to their work through the use of unconventional materials, problematizing the relationship between building, inhabiting, and caring. In this sense, the article points out that self-construction operates simultaneously as a means of accessing housing and as a tool for vocational training. It also reflects on the feminization of stages in the construction process, which redefines both trades and ways of living in the peripheries of intermediate cities.