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This paper examines the politics of placemaking in an expanding self-built settlement in the city of Cartagena, Colombia, under everyday conditions of disposability and waste toxicity. Based on 11 months of ethnographic research, the paper introduces the triptych of disappearance, emergence, and appearance to categorize residents' everyday garbage-based practices. The paper argues that these three forms of garbage-based practices are racialized and forged through historical processes of urban displacement, shifting socio-political backgrounds, and legacies of violence. This paper highlights the intimate links between the material and social production of Black placemaking and embodied experiences of toxicities in Cartagena. It draws attention to the multiple ways in which Afro-Colombian residents endure and contest cumulative processes of embodied experiences of waste exposure through politics of placemaking. Garbage socio-material entanglements allow for the acknowledgement of the relationality of space, materials, people, and politics, which are constitutive of contentious relational politics of placemaking. As residents in urban contexts contend with ever-evolving waste challenges, this paper proposes novel ways of reading the inherent plurality of relational politics of placemaking, which can foreshadow alternative urban environmental futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a complex autoimmune disease that presents significant challenges for both patients and health care providers. The absence of functional β-cells in the pancreas results in a lifelong struggle for glucose regulation and necessitates meticulous management for survival. This paper highlights the intricacies of glucose regulation and the difficulties in maintaining stable blood glucose levels through exogenous means. Moreover, it explores the limitations faced by health care providers in managing T1D, leading to a superficial approach to care. The ultimate cure for T1D lies in prevention, although our current understanding of its etiology remains incomplete. By adopting an integrative approach to T1D care, health care providers can play a vital role in enhancing the management of this chronic condition. This paper aims to inspire a holistic perspective on T1D care and encourage further exploration and implementation of integrative strategies to improve the lives of individuals living with this complex disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antofagasta is an intermediate Chilean city featuring an extractive mining sector which attracts a population of low-income migrants, internal and cross-national, looking for economic opportunities. This leads to a gap between supply and demand for rental housing, subletting and homeownership, resulting in a highly speculative housing market. This paper examines the consequent increase in so-called informal settlements and shows how self-built housing has become an alternative way for the population of internal and foreign migrants to access housing. Drawing upon both quantitative (secondary statistics and a survey with 102 households) and qualitative research (15 in-depth interviews), the paper shows how a private-led, profit-oriented and racist housing market has consolidated in the city. Moreover, by shedding light on the everyday ways in which residents access urban services, the research points to the complex forms of juxtaposition between the formal and the informal in central, peri-central and peripheral sectors of the city. Therefore, the paper questions the formal–informal dualities in access to housing and the necessity to rethink housing and urban policies accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]