Social capital and community resilience to socio-natural hazards in informal settlements of Chile’s extractive north: city of Copiapó, Atacama region, Chile

Informal settlements in Chile’s extractive cities concentrate structural vulnerability and exposure to multiple socio-natural hazards, including mass movement processes, flooding, and fires, among others. The article asks: how do different forms of social capital translate into differentiated capacities for resilience (coping, adaptive, transformative) in the face of the hazards confronting informal settlements in the mining city of Copiapó, Atacama Region? The discussion combines research methods applying semi-structured interviews with community leaders and institutional actors, and participatory mapping workshops aimed at identifying meeting points in the event of mass movement risk. Three findings emerge. First, bonding capital mobilizes labor, information, and resources—housing committees, early-warning networks, and communal soup kitchens—that sustain the response to hazards, but do not compensate for structural deficits in infrastructure and services. Second, linking capital distributes institutional access asymmetrically: settlements that are formally registered and hold active concessions specifically gain access to mitigation and regularization works, while unregistered settlements remain exposed, which explains why communities with similar levels of internal cohesion achieve markedly different adaptive capacities. Third, intersectoral coordination shows transformative potential with respect to mass movement risk, but remains underdeveloped for other hazards given bureaucratic fragmentation and the mismatch between institutional timelines and urgent needs. Community resilience thus emerges as a negotiated, culturally situated process, in which internal solidarity, gendered networks, and territorial belonging interact with—and are obstructed by—the institutional frameworks that govern access to disaster risk reduction resources. The policy implications point toward equity-sensitive approaches to linking capital that reduce asymmetries in institutional access without instrumentalizing community self-management.