Contradictions catch up: Astrid B. Stensrud, ‘Settlers and Squatters: The Production of Social Inequalities in the Peruvian Desert’, in M. Ystanes, I. Strønen (eds), The Social Life of Economic Inequalities in Contemporary Latin America: Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 | settler colonial studies blog

Contradictions catch up: Astrid B. Stensrud, ‘Settlers and Squatters: The Production of Social Inequalities in the Peruvian Desert’, in M. Ystanes, I. Strønen (eds), The Social Life of Economic Inequalities in Contemporary Latin America: Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

01Nov17

Abstract: This chapter discusses the production of social inequalities in the Majes Irrigation Project (MIP) in southern Peru in terms of class, race and gender. More than 30 years after the construction of MIP, and after radical neoliberal structural adjustments in the 1990s, many of the first settlers have lost their farms or are struggling with debt. Nevertheless, Majes is known as a ‘place of opportunities’, and thousands of people have migrated from the poor rural highlands in search of work or informal business, settling in the desert surrounding the irrigated areas. The population in Majes comes from different places, with various cultural, educational and economic backgrounds. The chapter examines how Majes has been generated through relations of capital and labour and how families experience debt and uncertainty, and yet continue struggling to get ahead in a precarious informal economy. The chapter argues that inequality is embedded in the historical intersectionality of class formations, gender and conceptions of race and that these differences have not diminished with various attempts of social reform. On the contrary, social inequality has increased during the past three decades of neoliberalism, with more insecure conditions for farming and work.

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