What happens when water is commodified? Case study Mexico: dominant movements and alternative discourses in the access to water landscape

This thesis examines the “bottled water paradigm,” where a market version of access to water replaces the traditional state-to-citizen water relationship. This is the case in Mexico, where safe drinking water is primarily provided by bottled water companies. Tracing the history of the bottled water industry in Mexico, this thesis examines the impact this commodified water has on working poor households in five regions of Mexico. Utilizing an economic survey and ethnographic case studies, this thesis interrogates this growing global trend under the lens of an expanded Social Reproduction Theory. Additionally, thesis shows how neoliberal water policies have converged with neoliberal housing and welfare policies to create the demand for this phenomenon. Specifically, this thesis finds that unregulated social housing policies relocating millions of Mexicans to vulnerable peripheral conditions lacking water infrastructure, and social welfare policies substituting state services with cash transfers, have combined to indirectly subsidize this industry.