Temporal structures of the poor: Social mobility and the struggle for the future in Chile

Abstract

Since the ‘culture of poverty’ studies in the 1960s, temporal structures have become essential for understanding poverty and its reproduction. Most studies in this field have characterised poverty by a strong presentism, a neglect of the future, and a lack of agency in shaping the course of life. This article provides a novel approach to make sense of the intersection between time and poverty by empirically analysing the work that the poor perform to distinguish, link and valuate their past, present and future and make sense of their lives as stories of social mobility. Drawing on the biographical narratives of poor men and women from urban Santiago and rural Maule in Chile, we argue that the temporal structures of the poor intertwine a pragmatic presentism with the aspiration of social mobility through the sacrificial structure of an extended self. These findings reveal that the poor are not passive subjects of destiny but agents of a dynamic and open-ended story, and that their biographies are structured not only by the fatalism of the repetition of the past but also by a dramatic struggle for the future.