Route bivouac squatting and punk temporality in central Chile: Parallel and semi-parallel time in episodic urban occupation

This article examines a configuration of punk life in the city–coast corridor of central Chile characterized by short-stay occupation of unoccupied houses used as bivouacs sustaining urban vagabonding under parallel and semi-parallel time. Rather than approaching occupation as settlement or housing struggle, the analysis foregrounds temporal regimes that organize movement, subsistence and episodic domesticity. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography conducted between 2023 and 2024 across Santiago, Valparaíso and nearby coastal communes, the study combines participant observation, fieldnotes and informal and semi-structured interviews, focusing on approximately fourteen bivouac episodes involving rotating micro-groups. Findings show that houses function as waypoints rather than residential projects: interiors are improvised, sleep is irregular and exits occur through interruption, neighbour pressure or detention. Predictable weekday vacancy in second-home territories reduces surveillance but does not eliminate recurrent misclassification as burglary, vagrancy or ‘squatting’. Analytically, the article distinguishes route bivouac squatting from Latin American campamentos/tomas and from European social centres, proposing it as a temporally governed, thinly social and light-infrastructure form of occupation. By shifting attention from territory to tempo, the study contributes to debates on punk temporalities, mobility and informal urban dwelling, showing how episodic domesticity emerges at the intersection of precarious livelihoods, subcultural rhythms and vacancy landscapes.