Feminist and Tenant movement in Argentina

Building common struggle in time of authoritarian financialisation

Lucia Cavallero and Ana Vilenica

Published in Issue 8.1 // Conversations

Keywords: Housing financialization, feminist movement, tenant movement, cross-movement alliance, Argentina

Abstract:

This conversation with Argentine feminist theorist and activist Lucía Cavallero explores the intersections between the feminist movement Ni Una Menos and the tenant movement Inquilinos Agrupados within the broader context of Argentina’s shift toward authoritarian financialisation under the presidency of Javier Milei. This exchange traces three phases of feminist–tenant convergence—pre-pandemic, pandemic, and authoritarian—highlighting how feminist analyses of economic violence, indebtedness, and the politicisation of domestic life opened new terrains for tenant organising. Cavallero discusses shared assemblies, joint campaigning for the Rent Law, and the co-production of quarterly tenant surveys that expose gendered patterns of indebtedness and vulnerability within deregulated housing markets. The conversation also reflects on strategies of internationalist feminist organising, the challenges of mobilisation under an ultra-right government, and the centrality of grassroots, neighbourhood-based work to rebuilding social fabric and sustaining resistance. This conversation is part of the Conversation Series: Pursuing Tenant International: Learning from struggles for home in Abya-Yala | Part IV, edited by Ana Vilenica.

http://doi.org/10.54825/ZRWC1449

Luci Cavallero is a feminist activist and professor of Feminist Economics at the Universidad de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) and at the Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda (UNDAV). She is a postdoctoral fellow of the National Research Council (CONICET), she is also part of the GIIF (Feminist Research and Intervention Group).

Ana Vilenica is Associate Research Professor at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade and co-investigator at Södertörn University. She is a member of the Ultra-red Journal collectives. Her research explores translocal, transnational, and transcontinental organizing within and beyond radical housing struggles in Europe and the Americas, with her latest projects focusing on anti-extractivist struggles in Serbia and infrastructures of engagement in Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea region.

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