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Urban informality has been the subject of renewed attention in recent years, with a resurgence of interest from architecture and planning. A focus on informality has however been criticised as reviving colonial hierarchies, characterising entire cities in terms of lack and rendering them perpetually inferior to Western cities. The call to postcolonialise urban studies has been answered by an emerging literature which has neglected Latin America. This paper therefore examines recent work on urban informality in the region that resonates with other scholarship at the intersection of postcolonial and urban studies. The Latin American work is characterised by an emphasis on informality as resistance and by challenges to the formal/informal binary. Its 'favela-isation' of the continent can however perpetuate dualistic interpretations, entrenching or inverting stereotypes rather than disrupting them. The paper also asks what postcolonial readings of informality from elsewhere can contribute to understanding Latin American experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often assumed that in Latin America the family will care for elderly relatives. Yet, older people''s dependence on family members should not be regarded as unproblematic. This article reviews the living arrangements of older women in urban Mexico, where, despite widely held beliefs about the special treatment merited by women as mothers, one in nine older women now lives alone. Recent figures suggest the proportion is growing rapidly. We use a life course perspective to explore the reasons for this pattern and examine the implications for the well-being of unmarried women living alone or with married daughters or sons. The article presents findings from a research project on gender and the home using a combination of qualitative and survey research methods in Guadalajara, Mexico''s second largest city. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]