Cultural Racism

Abstract

Chile is one of the countries with major destination flows from Latin America and the Caribbean. In such a context, new distinctions and racial formations have emerged, establishing different forms of social exclusion and racism that are performed in the everyday interaction and sociocultural practices that take place in residential neighborhoods. This chapter draws on a research based on one of the most multicultural boroughs in Santiago: Recoleta, historically located in a territory called “La Chimba.” The aim is to examine contemporary forms of cultural racism in increasingly multicultural neighborhoods, suggesting the need to consider migration and housing policies as key factors for understanding the emergent social conflict. It is argued that the housing precarity in which migrants are forced to live due to restrictive migration policies, the housing market, and the structure of social relations, reproduces everyday cultural racism against Latin American and Caribbean migrants. Drawing on a larger research project that consisted of a 17-month ethnography, 70 in-depth interviews, and two focus groups with migrants and Chileans, this chapter shows how public spaces are racialized through social practices and interactions, and how the making of “race” in urban spaces has an impact on the way in which migrants inhabit urban spaces and negotiate their “right to the city” in the everyday.