Care, Vulnerability and Gender Violence (Argentina 2019-2021)

Abstract

This article traces the path followed by a woman victim of gender-based violence, who, one night left her home (with her daughters) and moved to a little place in the northwest of the province of Córdoba. We take as basis our ethnography carried out among the neighbours of Villa de Pocho in order to analyze the search and construction of a home, regarding the concept of vulnerability. Fieldwork allows us to explore how women and their families –who have been victims of gender-based violence– live in vulnerable households and were able to rebuild themselves in front of violent events, relying on family ties and social support networks. This tour also allows us, on one hand, to observe the way in which the concept of vulnerability is being used in different situations or scenarios as a moral and bureaucratic resource both by public authorities, to select those who protect, and, on the other hand, by vulnerable people, to claim their rights. Vulnerability emerges as a space of experience in which people learn to navigate and where distress, creativity and social support networks overlap.