Giving Voice to the Choices and Strategies of Poor People in Reaction to what they Imagine Housing Policies to be: A Micro-Ethnographic Study On ‘Juntando Manos’, a Housing Cooperative Located in the Reparto Mariana Sanzon, Leon-Nicaragua

Abstract: The purpose of this micro-ethnographic study was to bring to light the choices and strategies of poor people in reaction to what they imagined housing policies to be in Nicaragua. The analysis used four of Bourdieu’s concepts which are Habitus, Capital, Field, and Agency and his structuralistic constructivism and interpretivism within a mainly phenomenological approach. Both approaches emphasized poor people’s own subjective experiences and perceptions in terms of housing policies. The research questions dealt with what the meaning of housing policies for poor people in Nicaragua was and what the underlying motives/incentives affecting poor people’s strategies in relation to housing policies were. The study was located in the Reparto Mariana Sanzon in a housing cooperative called Juntando Manos in Leon, Nicaragua. The main qualitative methods were participant observation and semi-structured interviews. These were complemented with focus groups and a field work diary. The outcomes were that poor people knew what they needed, but they were constrained by the field of housing policies. The choices did not help them to access a house due to low salaries, low position within the field to negotiate and informal jobs. So, poor people’s strategies are based on: reliance on aid, denial of the state’s duties, and practices encouraged the prevalence of these constrained structures. While some poor people learnt the lesson of agency well, others felt so comfortable in their everyday practices that they forgot that they were being caught by it and reproducing it. The lack of education and material circumstances under which they live helped to reinforce these practices. Still, their family’s responsibilities and experiences of self-esteem kept a flame of agency in them.