Permanent Impermanence in the Anthropocene: The emergence of a guest-worker society in a Patagonian Mountain village

Abstract

At a stage of capitalism where “the environment” emerges as an existential category, conservation policies become weaved into processes of expulsion. The idea that there is not enough for everyone reconfigures social relations according to the logics of guest-worker societies, where rights and belonging are contingent on employment. Through the exploration of mobile homes as a practice of im/mobilization and resistance to the dynamics of expulsion in El Chaltén (Argentina), I develop the concept of permanent impermanence as a way of theorizing the affective experience of Anthropocene im/mobilization, and its patterning across spatial and temporal dimensions.