Comparative empirical evidence is presented to show the basic instrumentality of low‐income urban dwellers to the existential circumstances they face. In Latin America, urban dwellers have seemingly internalised the urban/industrial values of capitalist society and, depending on the availability of jobs and other urban resources and facilities, choose the most rewarding strategy for obtaining benefits. Given the general lack of a well‐established structure of secondary industry and the particularistic procedures presently most appropriate for getting jobs and other resources, the motives and basis for communal and collective action are lacking. This is seen most clearly in the example of squatting, where short‐term collective action does not develop further, once the objectives of the squatters are achieved. Various forms of instrumental action are expressed in a typology based on subjective orientations and objective opportunities. In the light of the evidence cited, discussions of “marginality,”“urban social movements” and “restructuring of community