Residentiality as a competence. An approach based on the modes of realization of the State

Abstract

The approaches used in social studies on housing in Chile have in common the consideration of the State as a key instrument in its promotion, development and production, whether from the action of its laws or from the operation of its structures and institutions. Within this framework, both the notion and the statistics of housing increase and deficit serve to evaluate this instrument and the orientations it assumes. Regardless the above, this paper explores a different approach, where the State is a social project whose realization requires the articulation of specific competencies, as those associated with occupying its territorial space and which are linked to the notion of residentiality. Based on the review of legislative and statistical procedures, the text analyzes the wide process that describes residentiality as a State’s realization phenomenon, and discusses whether the displacement of the management of these procedures to areas other than the State constitute a detriment of its competences in favor of other social projects that dispute, this way, Statehood in the Chilean case.