| Summary: | Through the analysis of an “indigenous” population rehousing experiment carried out in Mexico, this article aims to understand how institutional and legal norms intended to establish a new social and spatial order can co-exist with, or even produce, the practices they sought to eradicate. During the 2000s, the Mexico City town council promoted access to home ownership for indigenous families living in irregular settlements in the city center. This minority housing policy was intended to compensate for the exclusion of the poor, immigrants and racialized groups from the housing market. It also symbolically acknowledged their right to become full owners and citizens, in an urban city center many sought to live in. Yet, more than a decade after the program started, a considerable part of the targeted population still lives in irregular habitat. Analyzing the interplay of actors and the power relations that led to the implementation of such an ambitious policy, questioning precarious populations’ relation to centrality, this article seeks to explain why most of the irregular settlements are still in use. The paper is based on data I collected during several stays in Mexico City, between 2003 and 2015: interviews with housing-policy officials, analysis of administrative documents and ethnographic investigation carried out in irregular settlements in the La Roma neighborhood occupied by indigenous families.
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