Navigating ambiguity within neighbour-based organisations in Mexico City: From proximity to protest

Neighbours are ambiguous ties, easier to disengage from than other personal relationships, whose meaning and obligations are flexible and not settled in advance. This article examines how neighbour-based organisations navigate this ambiguity in their process of organising. Rather than observing neighbourhood activism as carried out by already-formed and homogeneous collective actors, this article takes a step back and analyses how neighbour relationships become the building blocks of collective action. The article uses a case study approach and draws on ethnographic fieldwork to study the internal dynamics of a neighbour-based organisation campaigning for improved water access in a self-built neighbourhood of southern Mexico City. It identifies four mechanisms through which the organisation navigated ambiguity: identifying common ground, keeping each other accountable, mobilising existing networks of social ties, and linking the campaign to a shared neighbourhood history. It argues that neighbour ambiguity is not a barrier to neighbourhood activism but an inherent condition of it, continuously managed rather than eliminated in the process of organising. It shows how neighbourly ties can become political resources and how collective action and solidarity, rather than merely emerging from proximity, are sustained through ongoing relational work.