Transformations of plebeian illegalisms in Greater Buenos Aires
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Abstract
This article examines recent transformations of plebeian illegalisms in the Buenos Aires metropolitan periphery through the concept of the “transa universe” as a social assemblage that articulates market dynamics, labor, prestige, protection, and violence. Rather than reducing the phenomenon to the expansion of vertically organized criminal structures or to supply-and-demand explanations, the study situates retail drug markets within broader processes of labor precarization, community fragmentation, and the weakening of state and political mediations. Drawing on territorial evidence and comparative scholarship, it argues that the current mutation is characterized not by the consolidation of centralized cartels but by the horizontal, rhizomatic proliferation of self-employed actors, which challenges traditional policing arrangements and reshapes neighborhood life. The article explores the internal dynamics of the market—division of labor, control of money flows, replaceability at the lower levels—and their impact on moral economies of recognition, local redistribution of resources, and the transformation of informal codes of coexistence. It further analyzes the link between unequal consumption patterns, the erosion of upward mobility narratives, and youth migration into low-level drug market roles, highlighting the tension between promises of immediate mobility and structural precariousness. The paper concludes that these transformations do not produce a coherent alternative order but rather an ambivalent landscape in which regulation and deregulation coexist, and where the expansion of illegal markets reconfigures—unevenly and contingently—the conditions of everyday life in Buenos Aires’ marginalized neighborhoods.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
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