Towards a cartography of small-scale property grabbing: the case of Mexico City

Abstract

This article examines the everyday dynamics and territorial manifestations of small-scale property grabbing in Mexico City, emphasizing the central role of private violence in shaping contemporary forms of urban dispossession. Unlike accounts that focus on state-led or institutional mechanisms, this study foregrounds how coercive practices—such as threats, harassment, and the deployment of private or illegal enforcers—structure the appropriation of property at the urban margins. By analyzing the entanglements between legal regimes and criminal economies, the article challenges the perception of property grabbing as merely extralegal or exceptional. Drawing on spatial and legal analysis, it maps patterns of dispossession embedded within broader circuits of real estate speculation and urban development. It contends that property grabbing operates not simply as a legal infraction but as a mechanism of accumulation by dispossession, materialized through the everyday and often privatized use of violence that reshapes urban space.