Informal settlers are the avant-garde of society towards its transformation as a multitude. In the intersection of labor and politics these (multitude) actors interact with the space and produce neoliberal marginal cities. This is a political struggle with labor features, and it is operating during an intermediate stage of political shift that is driving flexible institutions from modern state. This territorial transformation emerges from the interaction between constituent power (territorial assemblages) and constituted power (governance assemblages).

However, this described emerging political order is no longer the starting point; it realizes every time, becoming at each moment of spatial control, the temporary stabilization of constituent power. This dynamic may explain something observed repeatedly in Peruvian polity. Here political parties disappear, and, contrary to the common sense of political scientists, territorial assemblages are persisting. Moreover, these neighborhood organizations, transport unions, informal markets and producer associations remain politically effective. The multitude organizes territorially even when formal political institutions weaken.

Thus, informality is not merely illegal housing at the city margins. It is the emergence of a new multitude; it is agents collectively producing neighborhoods, economies, infrastructure, and social organization. During this iterative game, the still working State eventually recognizes what already exists and the rules of the game, where the elected government (State) is no longer the sole player.

Building further into the conceptual and ontological elaboration of this phenomena, it is important to state that the (new player) multitude is not a social class, it is a mode of social existence (Virno 20251). This is surprisingly similar to assemblage theory, where assemblages are not objects, they are configurations of relations. In the intersection with intellect and politics, labor (production of space) now includes communication, affects, language, cooperation and culture. In this ‘operaio’ inspired elaboration, the production process is reversed. Society experiments first, Capital later appropriates labor. In the political practice, constituent power never disappears, it continuously produces new institutions.

Reference

  1. Paolo Virno. 2025. A Grammar of the Multitude. For an analysis of contemporary forms of life. Semiotext(e). ↩