Sociopolitical construction of disaster risk in informal settlements (SoPoCoDRIS): Evidence from extractive cities in Northern Chile

Chile has made progress in policies aimed at reducing and preparing for socio-natural hazards, especially in urban areas affected by earthquakes and tsunamis. Less attention is paid to risk exposure in informal settlements, especially those located at or beyond urban area boundaries. Based on a study of cities in northern Chile's extractive region and 45 interviews with institutional actors and community leaders, the results reveal five interlinked mechanisms that socio-politically construct risk: institutional fragmentation and responsibility gaps; tensions between housing policy and risk management; social production of risk and forced relocation; community agencies; and risk tolerance. The article contributes to overcoming the dichotomy between physical-technical and social approaches to risk, demonstrating that socio-natural threats indiscriminately cut across formal and informal spaces and that vulnerability is unevenly distributed according to each group's capacity for urban negotiation. The sociopolitical construction of risk emerges as an analytical tool to understand how risk is configured and sustained over time in extractive neoliberal urbanization contexts. • Disaster risk in informal settlements is socio-politically constructed, not physically determined. • Settlements, being outside of urban regulation, increase the exposure to multiple disaster risks throughout the territory. • Institutional fragmentation and responsibility gaps sustain risk exposure across four cities. • Housing policy and risk management operate as competing logics, relocating vulnerability. • Community agencies—especially women leaders—fill state voids but cannot replace structural DRR. • Risk exposure and land affordability are inversely linked under extractive neoliberal urbanization.