Intimate Politics of Dwelling. Gender, Housing, and Care in Greater Buenos Aires during the Pandemic

Abstract

During the social isolation imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, housing acquired an unprecedented centrality by simultaneously concentrating work, study, care, and recreational activities. In this context, the home ceased to function as a mere backdrop to everyday life and became an active infrastructure that organized, enabled, and also constrained daily practices. Based on a set of qualitative interviews conducted with residents of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA), this article analyzes the transformations in the uses of domestic space during confinement, paying particular attention to gender inequalities and the intensification of care demands. Drawing on perspectives inspired by Actor-Network Theory, the article conceptualizes housing as an assemblage of human and non-human actants—rooms, objects, technologies, and bodies— whose material configuration mediated the experience of lockdown in differentiated ways. The analysis shows that the capacity of the home to absorb the pressures of confinement was uneven and closely linked to its material conditions, access to open spaces, and the social distribution of care work.