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Volume 36.4 July 2012 689–705 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
DOI:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01122.x

The Symbolic Dimension of Mobility:

Architecture and Social Status in
Ecuadorian Informal Settlements
CHRISTIEN KLAUFUS

Abstract ijur_1122 689..705

This article explores how the urban poor use global flows of people, goods and ideas as
resources to counter the stigma of poverty, focusing on home improvement activities in
Ecuadorian informal settlements. Whereas urban poverty is usually associated with
deficient housing and slums, the article describes how residents of informal settlements
use imported architectural designs and cosmopolitan facilities to improve their homes. It
is argued that the mobility of cultural products offers the urban poor potential resources
to achieve higher levels of social prestige and wellbeing, thereby analytically connecting
the notion of symbolic mobility to current poverty debates.

Preface
Doña Clara, age 76, lives alone in a three-storey house with a yellow and green facade
in the heart of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi in Cuenca, Ecuador. The house belongs to her
daughter Julia, who lives in the US. It was built with the remittances that Julia’s husband
sent home. A few years ago, Julia and her two daughters joined him and Clara became
the house’s new occupant. Over the past decades Clara has seen all of her children and
grandchildren leave for New York. They have asked her to join them, but she prefers to
stay in Cuenca, close to her elderly relatives in the nearby villages. Seen from the streets,
the yellow house looks bigger and in better shape than that of her neighbors. The house
has been equipped with several phone lines that enable Clara to stay in touch with her
children abroad. In contrast with the well-maintained facade and modern equipment, the
living room consists of old, worn-out furniture, which does not seem to bother her. The
most important elements are the photos of her family, which are displayed prominently
on the living room walls. Through the pictures Clara has become familiar with the
hotspots of New York and with the cosmopolitan life of her children and grandchildren.
Compared to Clara’s youth in rural Ecuador, her children and grandchildren have come
a long way.1
An old adobe patio house, a few blocks up the hill, is where doña Gloria, 78 years old,
lives with two daughters, a son-in-law and three grandchildren. She spends her days
cooking, cleaning and weaving baskets. She was seriously ill a couple of years ago, but

The research upon which this article is based has received financial support from the EFL Foundation
in The Hague. Many thanks go to the residents of the Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, architects Augusto
Samaniego, Boris Albornoz and Xavier Ordóñez, and the organizations in Cuenca that have contributed
to this study. Special thanks go to Freek Colombijn, Rivke Jaffe, my CEDLA colleagues and IJURR’s
anonymous reviewers for their stimulating comments on earlier drafts.
1 All names used in this paper are pseudonyms.

© 2012 Urban Research Publications Limited. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA
 690 Christien Klaufus

she ‘came back from the other side’ and now she is in good health again. This extended
family of three generations has been living in visible poverty for as long as I have known
them. The house they occupy shows signs of deterioration: the adobe construction is
falling apart; there are cracks in the walls, floors and ceilings; the furniture is worn-out
and the kitchen is full of flies. Daughter Soledad is a nurse in the public hospital and
consciously strives for hygiene in her own house. Yet the deteriorated dwelling and tough
economic conditions limit her possibilities. A steady job as a nurse does not generate
enough income to obtain another house. However, the family has become engaged in
transnational networks since Soledad’s 17-year old son obtained a computer with an
Internet connection. The boy also takes French classes, preparing himself for an
educational career abroad. Since my last visit in March 2011, the boy’s social world has
become connected to mine through Facebook. Life in Gloria’s cracked old adobe house
has changed under the forces of globalization, offering new possibilities to a younger
generation.

Introduction
The relationship between mobility and political mobilizations, aimed at dignified
working and living conditions, is central to the so-called ‘mobility turn’ in the social
sciences (Sheller and Urry, 2006; Urry, 2007). This attention to mobility and people’s
aspirations to get ahead in life is not new. Many scholars have described, for example, the
connection between migration and social mobility (e.g. Turner, 1968a; Van Lindert,
1991; Willis, 2010). Others have connected mobility and social inequality to cultural
resources. Ulf Hannerz (1992) contends that intensified flows of goods, people and ideas
offer certain groups new opportunities for social mobility. However, he stresses that these
flows also increase social inequality (not only in an economic but also in a cultural
sense), since control over material resources and symbolic representations is an
important asset in social positioning processes (Hannerz, 1992; 1996).
Sheller and Urry (2006) argue for more analytic interconnectedness between mobility
and fluidity on the one hand, and patterns of concentration and territorialization on the
other. Gardiner Barber and Lem (2008) stress the need to make political mobilization and
social unevenness explicit in the analysis of mobilities, pointing out that it is often social
inequality that produces mobility in the first place. As demonstrated in Maeckelbergh’s
(2012, this issue) article, seemingly immobile households can mobilize goods and ideas
to make claims about who they are and how they want to be treated. Virtual mobility
through ICT networks can also become a resource, as the vignettes of Clara and Gloria
show, and as Jaffe (2012, this issue) argues in her analysis of ‘ghetto’ music. The
connections between worldwide flows of people, money, goods and ideas and local
meaning-making demonstrate that individual and collective agency can be activated both
through geographical movements of people and through imagined connections between
people across space, even when they are relatively immobile.
This article explores the symbolic dimension of mobility and immobility in informal
settlements in Ecuador. The question guiding this exploration is how the urban poor use
the mobility of people, goods and ideas in their domestic environment to counter the
stigma of poverty and to achieve higher levels of self-esteem and social recognition. The
use of ‘mobility’ as a resource for home improvement basically occurs in two ways:
either people move to a better house or people try to profit from the circulation of new
ideas and goods to improve the existing dwelling. The former example is called physical
mobility, which includes local and transnational migration. The latter example is referred
to as symbolic (or sometimes as semiotic) mobility, which is the way in which the
worldwide circulation of cultural products and knowledge is used by individuals to
negotiate their identities and lifestyles (Hannerz, 1992: 223–8; 1996: 156; Rabine, 1998:
68; Blommaert, 2003: 611). In both cases, ‘mobility’ becomes a resource (Urry, 2007).

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symbolic mobility profit from the
circulation of new goods an ideas
physical mob people move tu a
 better house

The symbolic dimension of mobility in Ecuador 691

Physical mobility Symbolic mobility

Mobility of people: people move to Mobility of money, goods and
a be er house in a non-s gma zed ideas across the globe: people use
area; or move to another country remi ances, imported goods and
ideas for home improvement

Mobiliza on
People pursue rights, make claims through
architecture, mediate social status and
contribute to neighborhood progress to contest
s gma za on

Social mobility
People achieve higher levels of wellbeing,
social recogni on, social inclusion, a higher
socio-economic posi on; people lose the
s gma of poverty

Figure 1 Symbolic mobility and mobilization in urban informal settlements

As the empirical focus is on the residents who have remained in informal settlements,
I treat the option of moving house only as a possibility. Elsewhere I describe the existing
migration patterns in more detail (Klaufus, 2012a). Here, I focus on representations in
residential space, that is, those activities aimed at communicating ideas about wellbeing,
progress and citizenship. The focus on (images of) residential space as a vehicle for
social recognition and wellbeing links this article to Dürr’s (2012, this issue) discussion
of slum tourism.
The analytic focus on the symbolic dimension of mobility and the mobilization of
symbolic resources starts with the assertion that social inequality often produces
geographical mobility (e.g. migration and sending of money and goods), and that specific
flows (e.g. remittances from migration and imported ideas) can be used as assets for
mobilization (e.g. citizenship claims) that might result in social mobility (see Figure 1).
Willis (2010: ii) has pointed out that migration is usually considered separately from
other forms of mobility and movement. This is especially true for those forms of mobility
that ‘not only [concern] the positional change of bodies in space, but also the
displacement of social representations and the very power of individual self-
representation’ (Barriendos Rodríguez, 2007: 161, translation by Anke van Wijck). In the
case studies presented in this article, symbolic mobility is indeed related to transnational
migration, as most foreign goods and ideas enter the settlements through transnational
family networks. If symbolic resources are mobilized in effective ways, a new social
position can be achieved.
Empirically, the article draws on ethnographic research conducted during seven
fieldwork trips to Ecuador between 1999 and 2011, with a total stay of 16 months.
The case studies include informal settlements in two medium-size highland cities:
Cooperativa Santa Anita in Riobamba and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi in Cuenca. Riobamba
has 190,000 inhabitants and is characterized by high poverty rates, especially among the
Quichua and rural mestizo population (INEC, 2011). Cuenca, Ecuador’s third city, is a
cosmopolitan place with 400,000 inhabitants (INEC, 2011), which has become an axis of
transnational migration and incoming remittances since the 1990s. The longitudinal
study enables the elaboration of emic views on informal-settlement progress and
individual housing careers.

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Because stigmatization has long been based upon visual signs, which were verbally
rationalized by the elite to justify poverty (Klaufus, 2010), the residents of informal
settlements are reluctant to comment upon the house designs of others. Judgments in
terms of ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’ are avoided. Asked about the houses they liked, people
would answer that ‘entre gustos y colores no discuten los doctores’ (there is no
accounting for tastes) or ‘hay que conformarse’ (you just have to adapt), because it would
be impolite to discuss other people’s taste. Despite the sensitive nature of the subject, my
conversations with residents did in fact disclose countless stereotypes in architecture,
making it possible to distill their criteria in assessing house designs. Below, I elaborate
on the analytic framework, connecting poverty to the material and symbolic qualities of
residential space in informal settlements. After a description of urban poverty in Ecuador,
I analyze the empirical data to demonstrate how ‘mobility capital’ is used as a form of
mobilization, enabling the urban poor to make citizenship claims and increase their
wellbeing and social status. Those insights enable a number of conclusions about the
mobilizations that take place in informal settlements under the forces of globalization.

House design as symbolic capital

The domestic environment exposes socio-economic information to the outside world,
even as it hides information from the same public. As Bourdieu (1984: 6) argues:
‘taste . . . classifies the classifier’, indicating that houses sometimes reveal what the
inhabitants try to conceal in conversations. Non-verbal communication through material
culture and consumption patterns can be a way of claiming social recognition,
citizenship rights and a higher social status in relation to others (Holston, 1991; Miller,
1994; Narayan and Petesch, 2007: 20). The symbolic capital of the dwelling can be
mobilized non-verbally and verbally to communicate who the inhabitants are and how
they want to be seen. As is known, demonstrations of good taste and admired lifestyles,
for example in conspicuous consumption, mediate people’s place in the social hierarchy.
Symbolic capital can be ‘converted’ into respect or a higher social status (Veblen, 1953
[1899]; Bourdieu, 1977: 179; 1984; Cieraad, 1999). In this context, wealth or good taste
that remains unexposed tends to have limited social effects.
The meanings attached to architectural features also influence actual behavior:
‘People actively give their physical environments meanings, and they act upon those
meanings’ (Parker Pearson and Richards, 1994: 5; also see Fletcher, 1997: 199). Talking
about designs and consumption patterns is one way of mediating people’s social
aspirations. Although many domestic objects have taken-for-granted meanings that are
difficult to explain in words, the verbal rationalization of choice in the consumption of
goods and architecture shows that someone has access to insiders’ knowledge on taste
and style (Cohen, 1981; Van der Horst, 2008: 13). Sometimes material expressions in
residential space invoke other actions, for example when successful elements are copied
by others, whereas unsuccessful designs tend to be ignored.
A visible lack of resources in domestic space sends out a message of poverty and feeds
narratives about deficient citizenship (Narayan et al., 2000: 26). The visibility of poverty
in housing is emphasized in international programs such as the Millennium Development
Goals, which are based upon material deprivation (Sumner, 2007). National housing
programs in Latin America are equally based upon visible material deficiencies. National
census bureaus map the quality of construction materials and interior finishing to
locating poverty. In Ecuador, walls of adobe, plastic, cane, or corrugated iron are official
indicators of poverty (INEC, 2006a). The consequence of this method of classification is
that inhabitants of inadequate houses are labeled as ‘poor’. The sheer visibility of poor
housing and the unfavorable reputation of poor settlements work as a stigma that can
keep the inhabitants trapped in marginalization (Griffin and Ford, 1980; Ward, 1982;
Holston, 1991; Wacquant, 1999). On the other hand, because inadequate housing is used

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as a proxy for poverty, only households in substandard residences are targeted in

upgrading programs. Paradoxically, many urban poor prefer to hide their material
poverty to escape stigmatization: ‘house builders in the periphery use their constructions
to demonstrate that they are respectable, in spite of their grinding poverty’ (Holston,
1991: 458; cf. Klaufus, 2000).
A current debate in poverty and development studies asserts that basic needs are
insufficient indicators of (a lack of) wellbeing, as they exclude the agency and
experiences of the poor. The dominance of the basic needs approach in development
policies has resulted in a narrow focus on metropolitan slums, overlooking more subtle
forms of wellbeing and ill-being. Although the visible material qualities of dwellings
are undeniably important, less visible immaterial characteristics such as dignity and
autonomy are relevant, for example for understanding the opportunities to move out of
poverty (Sen, 2000; Gough et al., 2006; Narayan and Petesch, 2007). For the urban poor,
social mobility and higher levels of wellbeing depend on ‘successful efforts to challenge
prevailing social norms that perpetuate poverty’ (Narayan and Petesch, 2007: 20).
Countering the stigma of poverty depends partly on the ability to hide visible signs of
poverty and display ‘correct’ behavior and attitudes, because, as Bourdieu (1984: 1–7)
has argued, social distinctions are based on cultural competences. This article draws on
a holistic notion of poverty that includes non-economic aspects such as escaping
stigmatization (Baulch, 2006).
Understanding the symbolic act of creating a stylish and clean-looking home is thus
relevant for an emic understanding of poverty and social mobility. At the same time, it is
important to acknowledge that the absence of visibly impoverished homes cannot be
equated with a total absence of poverty: neat-looking facades can be the result of
attempts to counter stigmatization while inhabitants are still unable to improve other
aspects of their wellbeing. Roberts (2010: 613) similarly argues that ‘inequality [can be]
obscured . . . by an improvement in living standards and the range of consumer goods
accessible to the poor’. Notwithstanding the disadvantages of hidden forms of poverty,
inhabitants use ‘good’ architectural design to perform a sense of dignity and decency that
is valuable to them. One of the ways to achieve this is by using ‘foreign’ ideas and
products that make houses look ‘modern’. Immersion in globalization is not exclusive to
so-called ‘world class citizens’, the urban poor are active participants as well. Studies of
informal settlements have hardly incorporated a focus on grassroots globalization
(Appadurai, 2000), although ‘[e]ven in places that at first glance are characterized more
by homogeneity and stasis than by pluralism and change, cultural circuits facilitating
motion are at work’ (Greenblatt et al., 2010: 5). That is the case in the informal
settlements analyzed here.
Of course, the idea of poor people’s agency is not new; it precedes the globalization
debate. Since the 1960s urban studies have addressed the aspirations of the urban poor,
their vulnerability and limited opportunities (Perlman, 1976; 2010; Lloyd, 1979; Moser,
2009). The connection between informal settlement residents’ physical and symbolic
mobility and their social status has been explored theoretically by John Turner (1968a)
in his ‘housing priorities’ model, which describes an expected migration trajectory across
urban space. Rural-urban migrants initially prioritize work over housing. Later they
invest in home improvement to achieve a higher social status. While his model has been
criticized for lacking empirical data and romanticizing the empowerment of the urban
poor (Burgess, 1982; Van Lindert, 1992; Mathéy, 1997), it offers a starting point for a
contemporary analysis of movement and mobilization.

Spatialization of urban inequality in Ecuador

Ecuador has high levels of social inequality, expressed by a Gini coefficient of 0.46
(INEC, 2006b; cf. Székely and Hilgert, 2007). The minimum wage is US $240 per month

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Table 1 Poverty level in research settlements (%), based on average monthly income

Cooperativa Santa Anita Ciudadela Carlos Crespi

Riobamba (1999) Cuenca (2001)
% (n = 41 HHs) (n = 72 HHs) Ecuador (2001)
Extreme poverty 76 53 15
Poverty 12 14 40
Above poverty level 12 33 45
Total 100 100 100
Sources: Household Surveys (1999; 2001); INEC Census 2001, processed by SIISE

(El Comercio, 2009; BCE, 2009).2 The price of the monthly canasta familiar básica is
US $535 (INEC, 2010),3 implying that a working-class household with two full-income
generating members does not earn enough to exceed the poverty line. Based on monthly
average income, the majority of the inhabitants of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and
Cooperativa Santa Anita is poor or extremely poor (see Table 1). Poverty also appears as
respiratory problems from dusty roads; as undernourished babies; as annoying scabies on
people’s bodies; and above all, as a social stigma connected to the peripheral location of
the settlement and the rural background of the residents (Griffin and Ford, 1980; Ward,
1982; Holston, 1991). In popular language, informal settlements in Cuenca and
Riobamba are spoken of as zonas rojas, dangerous areas with ‘uncivilized’ and
‘uncultured’ people. Thus, apart from uncomfortable living conditions, poverty is
experienced as the condition of second-class citizenship.
In the Andes, the poverty stigma forms part of a historical narrative, in which the
dichotomies urban/rural and rich/poor are intertwined with notions of race, hygiene and
citizenship (Colloredo-Mansfeld, 1998; Chambers, 2003; Wilson, 2004). People of rural
descent are often associated with backwardness and unhealthy, unclean behavior. For
most of the twentieth century, the poor were Indians and working-class mestizos. The
urban middle-class called them ‘dirty Indians’ to rationalize rural poverty. Colloredo-
Mansfeld (1998: 187) states that ‘the odours, textures, and materials of rural life become
racial emblems as the white-mestizo elite constitute themselves and their national
authority by pursuing an elusive physical and moral ideal: cleanliness’. Wilson (2004:
169) describes how, during the late nineteenth century, Indians in Peru were regarded
as non-citizens ‘when appeal could be made to a discourse of hygiene/disease to
substantiate their removal from the urban sphere’. In modernization offensives Latin
American states adopted measures to stimulate racial blanqueamiento (whitening)
(Appelbaum et al., 2003). Promoting the lifestyles of the white middle class — including
a ‘clean’ and ‘decent’ home — was regarded as a convenient route towards national
development and civilization. Late twentieth-century economic progress lifted the
Indians out of poverty and changed their status from rural Indian farmers to urban
mestizos, but did not remove all stigmatization (Colloredo-Mansfeld, 1998).
Cleanliness and citizenship were symbolically represented by the color white,
something that has also affected moral dispositions towards architecture, specifically the
color of the house facade. In colonial times, houses were covered with white chalk to
protect their facades. In southern Spain white chalk was used to keep out the heat. In the
Andean highlands, where daily temperatures vary between 15 and 25 degrees Celsius,
keeping out the sun was not a priority, but the purifying quality of chalk was appreciated

2 Wage minimums in Ecuador are legally established for certain occupational groups within the
private sector. For not-included groups and people working in the informal sector, there is no
minimum wage.
3 The amount of money needed to acquire a minimum set of products and services for a household
with four members and 1.6 income-generating members.

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as safeguarding public hygiene (Pazmiño Acuña and Fernández-Salvador, 1991).

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, it became possible to add colors to the chalk
to create a variety of soft-tone colors with which residents personalized their homes. The
hygienic quality of chalk was combined with notions of taste and style, exemplified in
color combinations on the facade. Today, regulations ensure that monuments in many of
Latin America’s historical city centers must be painted in colors drawn from an approved
‘colonial’ gamma of white and pastel tones (Jones and Bromley, 1996: 377–8; Jones and
Varley, 1999: 1553). In residential areas, the choice of color combinations of the facade
is equally subject to discussions about taste and decency.
For people in informal settlements, house designs play a crucial role in citizenship
narratives because stigmatization, experienced on a daily basis, is based on visible
markers. Doña Vanessa of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, who had moved to the settlement
shortly before I interviewed her, said that she was warned that she was going to live in
la boca del lobo, the wolf’s mouth, a bad neighborhood. Her experiences were different:
she found the area a tranquil and pleasant living environment. As a foreign female
researcher, I have received similar warnings, mostly on the part of municipal authorities
who said that conducting research in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi was dangerous. My
experiences were similar to Vanessa’s: it was a calm area with friendly people.
Stigmatization was a burden to the residents, not only because it lowered their self-
esteem but also because it reduced the possibilities of getting municipal support. The
head of the urban control department in Cuenca once confessed to me that his department
refrained from visiting Ciudadela Carlos Crespi in the years prior to 1990 because the
residents had a ‘bad reputation’ (Klaufus, 2012b).
Stigmatization by authorities and the general public limits residents’ sense of dignity.
Conversely, exerting control over the forms, uses and symbolic meanings of dwellings
contributes to social recognition and self-esteem, increasing a sense of dignity. Most
residents of the two settlements were able to make changes to their houses because they
were de facto homeowners (58% in Carlos Crespi and 98% in Santa Anita). As such, they
had control over the building process. The literature on homeownership argues that
control over the aesthetics and lay-out of a house induces feelings of autonomy, self-
respect and security (Hiscock et al., 2001). Somerville (1998: 254) states that:

Strictly speaking, empowerment is not to be equated with owning or controlling or managing

as such, but rather with the gaining of the freedom to choose whether to own or not to own, to
control or not to control, to manage or not to manage.

Earlier works on informal settlements already stressed the empowering effect of control
over domestic space. John Turner and William Mangin argued early on that moving from
a rental home to self-help housing provides residents with more self-esteem and hope for
a better future (Mangin, 1967; Turner, 1968a; 1968b; 1976; Turner and Fichter, 1972).
Turner’s work was, and still is, influential as he analytically connects physical and
symbolic mobility to the notion of a housing career.

Collective mobilization in/of domestic space

Over the past decade the collective mobilization for better neighborhood facilities has
weakened in Ecuador, while individual home improvement activities have increased.
One reason for this change is the political and economic crisis of the late 1990s, which
induced a massive wave of out-migration (Jokisch and Pribilsky, 2002). Transnational
migration was accompanied by high amounts of incoming remittances, which
stimulated individual investments in the home. Over time, neighborhood organizations
had difficulties uniting the residents, as many of them had migrated and the
remittances increased socioeconomic differences between migrant and non-migrant
households.

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The settlement households that are most economically deprived are non-migrant
female-headed households with children, of which the women have low education levels.
These households live in small, unfinished houses or they rent a room. They suffer from
the visibility of their poverty. Doña Blanca from Santa Anita offers an example: she and
her two children occupy a two-room mediagua (elementary house type without internal
hallway and a roof with one slope) without sanitation. In 1999 they were the poorest
household in the settlement. Having to use the plot as a toilet was humiliating, so they
tried to create some privacy with a waist-high brick wall. In 2007 their situation had not
improved, although her small shack and the ‘open-air toilet’ had become less visible as
more constructions had been built, screening her house off from the roadside.
In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi two shacks made of waste materials were inhabited by two
related households in 2001. Like doña Blanca in Santa Anita, they had no bathroom or
septic tank. Waste water and excrement trickled downhill through the meadow-land.
Neighbors complained about the unbearable odors and mosquito plagues caused by the
open sewage. Neighbor Amalia lamented: ‘being poor is one thing, but having to tolerate
this much, no, that’s unbearable.’ The neighbors wanted the inhabitants to be removed
and the houses demolished, because the unhygienic situation downgraded the image of
the rest of the neighborhood. It was not the lack of financial resources per se, but the
inability to make domestic space look clean and well-ordered, that the neighbors
regarded as humiliating. When I visited the area in 2009, the shacks were no longer there.
The families had moved elsewhere.
Collectively petitioning for a sewage system, however, was a long struggle. In 2001 a
group of residents asked the authorities to build a sewage system, but the municipality
responded that the location was unsuitable for occupation anyhow, because of recurring
landslides. A restraining wall had to be built to stop further soil erosion, before a sewage
system could be constructed. Bureaucratic red tape prevented the construction of both the
restraining wall and the sewage system. The lack of proper sewage facilities resulted in
health hazards and generated tensions over the social norms of hygiene and decency. In
an attempt to press the authorities, the residents invited some journalists from a local
television station and newspapers to show them the nuisances caused by the landslides.
However, the media coverage had no effect. The inhabitants said that that they were too
‘unimportant’ to get help.

Amalia: Building this path caused everything else to subside, and landslides started, as you can
see. Telerama [a local television station] was here, people from the radio came, they
interviewed us and all, but it did not get us anywhere. We asked the mayor to help us with this
situation, but no, no. No, they don’t care, because we are poor folk, because they live
elsewhere. If they lived here, the mayor and the like, we would have it much better, we would
have a road. But no politicians live here. They are not interested.
Rafael: As has been said: ‘nobody important lives here’.
Amalia: That’s right.
Rafael: Take the roads, for example. If you go to Avenida Don Bosco on the other side of town,
behind the stadium, all the way over there, you’ll see guards on every street corner.
Amalia: It’s different over there.
Rafael: Because the delegates live there, as well as the mayors, all ‘owners’ of the City of
Cuenca live there. More accurately: only us ‘Indians’ live here.

The statement that politicians regarded them as ‘Indians’, as ‘nobodies’, expresses their
experience with stigmatization and second-class citizenship. In dominant discourse,
pejorative names for rural inhabitants such as indios (Indians) and cholos (people of
mixed descent) are used to describe a lack of civilization and hygiene in the urban
periphery. Rafael paraphrases the use of pejoratives, not because there were many
self-defined Quichuas in the area (there were only two self-defined indigenous families),

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but because the semi-rural outskirts of town are regarded as ‘uncivilized’ areas.
Inhabitants experience such disdain on a daily basis.
Moreover, the story of Amalia and Rafael makes clear that collectively emphasizing
poverty appeared to be an ineffective way to make progress, and that collective action
often remained unsuccessful. Disguising poverty and achieving individual progress
seemed a more viable route towards a better life. Other authors have come to similar
conclusions. Bryan Roberts has argued that the erosion of reciprocal networks is
mirrored in poor people’s housing strategies, stating that ‘people, individually rather than
collectively, seek accommodation that best meets their budgets and family stage and
structure’ (Roberts, 2010: 75–6).

Mobility of design ideas as demonstrations of dignity

Foreign ideas and goods enter the local markets through transnational family
connections. Often, transnational migrants send foreign ideas about architecture to their
relatives at home through video’s, photo or magazine clippings, as well as through Skype
meetings between transnational family members, in which design ideas are discussed.
Architectural designs are mobilized to counter the stigma of poverty: ‘For those
successful in constructing a “remittances house”, or for those who are still trying to build
one, it is a matter of dignity’ (Taracena Arriola, 2010, translation and quotation marks
by the author). After local demonstrations of ‘foreign’ ideas are set in motion by
transnational families, they are adopted by neighbors who copy successful designs in
order to ‘make themselves present in a city that denies the possibility to live and that
excludes them; a virus that contaminates their neighbors’ (Tokeshi, 2009: 183,
translation by the author). The symbolic mobility of goods and aesthetic ideas is thus
strategically used in house designs to mobilize claims about a household’s upward
mobility (Bourdieu, 1984; Cieraad, 1999).
As Veblen (1953 [1899]) observed more than a century ago, the conspicuous
demonstration of good taste and admired lifestyles can be a powerful tool for social
mobility. Imitation of successful architectural examples is a common strategy among the
urban poor. Poor families copy the designs of prestigious groups to pretend they belong
to that group by imitating their aesthetic principles (Bourdieu, 1984; cf. Walmsley,
2001). However, the personal touch in house design is equally important, because it
expresses knowledge of style and good taste (Bourdieu, 1984; Holston, 1991). Generally
speaking, the external parts of the house — the facade, the roof, the fence — play a
crucial role in the mediation of individual social positions. Not only are the facade and
the fence visible from the street, they are also the physical and symbolic boundary
between private and public, between family life and community life. The facade can be
considered a front-stage setting, where formal messages about a household are sent out,
even though not all signs or messages can be controlled (Goffman, 1959): sometimes
openly exposed objects go unnoticed or fail to achieve the intended social effects (cf. Van
der Horst and Messing, 2006).
Knowledge of good taste is shown in the choice of forms and styles, for example in
the style of a window frame (see Figure 2). A well-designed and painted facade is meant
to communicate that a house is (almost) finished; that the neighborhood is consolidating;
and that the residents are respectable urban citizens living orderly lives. Though many
houses in the two settlements were hardly furnished, people prioritized the coloring and
decoration of the facade because it functioned as a social buffer. They knew from
experience that cosmetic impressions could sometimes be more important than actual
wealth or orderliness inside. No matter how poor people were, if the ‘package’ looked
decent and clean, inhabitants were treated with more respect.
Of the approximately 140 houses in Carlos Crespi and 100 houses in Santa Anita,
most had painted and decorated facades. Approximately a quarter of the houses in Carlos
Crespi had bare walls, for example the older adobe houses. In Santa Anita approximately

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698 Christien Klaufus

Figure 2 Remodeled houses in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi with fashionable window frames
(photo by the author)

80% had painted facades. Inhabitants of unplastered houses apologized for the fact that
their houses were ‘not yet finished’. In the process of finishing a house, roles are
gendered: house designs and home maintenance are mainly taken care of by men. During
weekends, men could often be seen working on their homes, building new extensions,
painting walls or fixing roofs. The interior design is primarily the work of women:
modern home-making is associated with clean-looking rooms and dedicated housewives
(cf. Oldenziel and Bouw, 1998).
Nowadays, the choice of appropriate colors and decorations for the facades depend
first of all on consumer trends, but it is still very much associated with decency and urban
citizenship. The idea of visible cleanliness is important. Poor people list the abilities to
‘look well’ and ‘appear well’ in health, clothing and housing as factors contributing to
their quality of life (cf. Smith and Mazzucato, 2009). In both settlements, residents
seemed almost obsessed with choosing the ‘right’ color combinations. Usually
households selected color combinations that differed (slightly) from the existing ones.
One inhabitant in Santa Anita copied the color scheme of off-white and bright green from
an appreciated neighboring house yet in an inverse order, so as to be original. In 1999 don
Carlos asked my advice about the correct colors for his facade, knowing that I was
trained as an architect. Because I did not know the latest fashions, I could not advise him
properly. Luckily a neighbor helped me out and soon his house was nicely finished.
As described above, an extensive repertoire of design ideas travelled physically
(by mail) or virtually (through the internet) from foreign countries to the informal
settlements in Ecuador, where they were applied to improve homes. Specific house
designs were associated with Spanish and American middle-class houses (see Figure 3).
Many residents preferred ‘Mediterranean’ colors such as off-white, sky blue and soft
yellow. In Cooperativa Santa Anita for example, one yellow house was described by the
neighbors as ‘tipo Murcia’ because the owners were said to live in Murcia, Spain, and
because the color yellow expressed the Mediterranean style. Following this trend,

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The symbolic dimension of mobility in Ecuador 699

Figure 3 Overview of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, 2011 — the villa in the middle is a carefully
designed migrant house, painted yellow (photo by the author)

neighbor Diego, who had no relatives abroad, decided to paint his white house yellow ‘in
order to make it look Mediterranean’, thus suggesting that he had relatives abroad. Such
narratives, which verbally rationalize people’s familiarity with cosmopolitan lifestyles,
appear side by side with the material ‘proofs’ of cultural imports.
Fashionable colors and products were associated with transnational migration, hence
with social mobility. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, María Caridad, whose husband lived in
the US, occupied a large, comfortable and highly appreciated white villa. She explained
her choice for the off-white color of the facade by stating that ‘almost the majority paints
[their house] in this color. At least I like it. It’s not too bright or too pale. It is a color that
looks good’. Not only did the white villa look big and clean because of its color, it was
also a symbolic contribution to the debates about appropriate and tasteful facade colors
that went on in Cuenca at that time.
But fashions change and so do fashionable color combinations. During my first visit
in 1999 a few houses had brown stained glass windows, which were held in high esteem
by the neighbors. In the years that followed, brown stained glass became a general trend.
In 2002 brown stained glass was no longer en vogue and blue stained glass had become
the new trend. In 2007 I noticed that in both neighborhoods many families had also
repainted their formerly Mediterranean soft-yellow walls in bright blue. Apparently this
color had become in vogue. In 2009 I counted several bright-green facades, which
showed the latest design trends that bestowed the occupants with prestige. In 2011
several yellow or blue facades had been repainted in salmon pink. Although insignificant
at first sight, such subtle dynamics demonstrate the resilience of people who are
otherwise limited in their upward mobility. According to Greenblatt (2004: 2), such
subtle forms of mobility are often overlooked in mobility studies, whereas they can
signal ‘responses to censorship or repression’.
Neighborhood inhabitants motivated the choice of materials and decorations by
referring to migrated relatives in the US or Spain or, if they did not have relatives abroad,
expressing that they were aware of the latest international trends. An effective way to

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700 Christien Klaufus

prove knowledge of international trends was for example to replace a common window
frame by an arched window with a grille pattern (see Figure 3). The arched windows
exemplify the symbolic dimension of mobility because over the years, many houses were
embellished with such arched windows, which were said to comply with the taste of
transnational migrants. Non-migrants installed arched windows to show their knowledge
of architectural fashions. Another example is the names of supposedly foreign brands.
Hannerz (1996: 156) states that
The market as a frame for the flow of cultures operates . . . by making their metropolitan
derivation a significant part of their value to the consumer. It can do so with regard to quite
specific goods, such as particular brand names.

The mobilization of metropolitan origins as symbolic capital often occurs in informal

settlements. A resident from Santa Anita, whose wife lived in Europe, explained his
choice for asbestos roof sheets of the brand Eurolit because the name reveals a ‘European
technology’, stressing his cultural and economic links with Europe. His aim was to end
up with a ‘European-type’ house. Generally, highly appreciated materials are ‘foreign,
‘modern’ and associated with a certain level of luxury that exceeds the most basic needs,
for example marble-tiled walls and concrete roofs (cf. Gough, 1996). The choice of the
construction materials thus offers room for maneuver.
Still, individual progress in home improvement varied considerably. The high pace of
the makeovers marked out internal differences between rich and poor households. The
rapidly changing color fashions for windows and facades set households with repainted
houses apart from those unable to paint their facades every couple of years. Yet, on a
collective neighborhood level the visibility of foreign goods and ideas was effective as it
attenuated the stigma of poverty. In 2007 the authorities considered the settlements in
both cities as ‘consolidating’. That year ICT facilities such as internet, email and mobile
phone networks had become common, especially in the homes of transnational families
who experienced increased virtual mobility in their connections with members abroad
(Jaffe, 2012). In 2009, almost every household had at least one mobile phone to
compensate for the lack of landlines.
The question as to what extent these attempts could be considered socially successful
in the larger urban society was answered by a civil engineer from the municipal office in
Cuenca. When he heard that my research area was Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, he
commented in a slightly disgruntled tone that some people in that settlement had bigger
and nicer homes than he as a highly trained middle-class civil servant could ever afford,
because he had no relatives abroad who sent him money. The urban myth about the large
houses owned by remittances receivers in the urban periphery confirmed that people like
María Caridad had indeed achieved a form of social mobility (see also Klaufus, 2006).

Conclusion: moving up without moving house

Even in places that are not directly associated with mobility and change, such as informal
settlements, the symbolic use of flows of people, goods and ideas can be encountered. In
Ecuadorian informal settlements, a strategic use of mobile symbols and products has
proven an effective way to counter the stigma of poverty. Nowadays, settlement residents
communicate their knowledge of cosmopolitan, modern, urban lifestyles through the
design and comfort level of their remodeled homes. Even when their quality of life was
still lacking in other respects, a decent-looking home made people look and feel less
poor. Although people were reluctant to comment upon the taste of others, the non-verbal
communication in architecture revealed general fashions and trends. The careful verbal
treatment of individual taste and social prestige was overruled by the power of ‘foreign’
elements in architectural design, and the design adaptations over the years.

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The symbolic dimension of mobility in Ecuador 701

After years of collective neighborhood action, individual home improvement

strategies became a more viable option to counter the stigma of poverty and move on in
life. Stimulated by a lack of attention from the government and NGOs, the urban poor
used the possibilities offered by globalization and the mobility of symbolic capital — the
flows of goods and ideas — to improve their lives, creating what Appadurai has called a
globalization from below. People struggled for higher levels of wellbeing, at least for the
next generations, so that they would be treated as full citizens. In total, higher levels of
wellbeing at a neighborhood level were achieved as a result of individual households’
creative involvement in globalization.
Moving house or improving a home were common strategies for upward social
mobility: some residents migrated or moved to a better house while the majority
remodeled their homes, stabilized the sources of income and created educational
opportunities for younger generations. The vignette of doña Clara shows that her family
combined physical and symbolic mobility, resulting in a higher socio-economic position
for all family members. Notwithstanding their social progress, doña Clara felt lonely
because all of her children had left the country. A net result of those processes can never
be given, but at least she felt proud that the younger generations had better opportunities
to get ahead in life than her generation had possessed.
The vignette featuring doña Gloria, Soledad and the 17-year old grandson shows that
even families who cannot move house nor improve their home still engage in
international flows of information such as the internet or through learning a foreign
language. The ability to use modern ICT equipment creates higher levels of self-esteem
through the imagination of a better future and the idea of being a good parent.
Meanwhile, physical mobility also remains an option: in 2011 Soledad told me that the
newly created Bank of the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Seguridad Social (Ecuadorian
Institute of Social Security) which opened its doors in 2010 offered credit possibilities to
all Ecuadorians with a relatively stable source of income. The possibility of moving
house now became realistic even for households without access to remittances. As
Soledad earns a regular income she might be eligible for a mortgage. In such a case,
moving becomes a more viable option for upward mobility than improving the
deteriorated adobe dwelling.
Notwithstanding the new mortgage possibilities now available, the majority of the
settlement households invest time and money in home improvement, carefully selecting
the right window frame and elegant color combinations for the facade. Overall, the
mobilization of symbolic goods and ideas has proven successful to the extent that local
governments do not call the areas zonas rojas anymore: the settlements are now regarded
as consolidating areas, although this does not mean that government support for
infrastructure increases. While some facilities have been supplied over the last couple of
years the pace of individual improvements in the area still surpasses that of government
contributions. Together, the individual improvements have resulted in the social mobility
of the neighborhood’s reputation. Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and Cooperativa Santa Anita
have diminished the stigma of poverty. Residents who have not migrated have moved up,
even without moving house.

Christien Klaufus (C.J.Klaufus@cedla.nl), Centre for Latin American Research and

Documentation (CEDLA), Keizersgracht 395–397, 1016 EK Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

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Résumé
Afin d’examiner comment les habitants pauvres des villes exploitent les flux mondiaux de
populations, de biens et d’idées pour échapper à la marque de la pauvreté, cet article
s’intéresse aux améliorations réalisées dans les habitats informels en Équateur. On
associe souvent la pauvreté urbaine à des taudis ou logements insalubres, mais les
occupants des habitats informels utilisent des concepts architecturaux importés et des
installations cosmopolites pour améliorer leur maison. L’analyse montre que la mobilité
des produits culturels procure à la population urbaine pauvre des ressources qui lui
permettent d’élever ses niveaux de prestige social et de bien-être, établissant ainsi un
lien entre la notion de mobilité symbolique et les débats actuels sur la pauvreté.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36.4

© 2012 Urban Research Publications Limited