The right to the favela: Re-imagining social change in Rio de Janeiro’s poor neighborhoods

• In Event: 4413 - Urban Issues

Abstract

Literature on the “right to the city” has proliferated in response to the work of Henri LeFebvre and the growing importance of the city in collective claims-making processes. Despite the concern among scholars in this field to document the mobilization tactics of marginalized urban populations, the city’s most vulnerable group has remained largely invisible: the urban poor. Across the Global South, for instance, the poor account for nearly one quarter of the urban population, though they are rarely the leaders or core participants of (working-class) labor movements, anti-globalization protests, or identity politics. In this article, I argue that their invisibility in the literature is not a reflection of an empirical reality but rather a limitation of our own imaginary as social movement scholars about the forms and configurations of mobilization. I draw on ethnographic research conducted between 2014 and 2017 in Rio de Janeiro’s informal neighborhoods, popularly known as “favelas,” where I documented dozens of activist groups mobilizing around social development and social and political changes. I argue that activists in favelas, where poverty, informality, and insecurity are geographically segregated, must construct a logic of action that speaks directly to their experiences as favela—and not urban—residents. By rescaling our lens from the city to the favela, we find that Rio’s urban poor (a) take the favela and not the city as their primary object of change; (b) mobilize around greater investments in the social development of their neighborhood, an end to geographically segregated violent conflict, and less discriminatory views of favela residents; while (c) remaining embedded in, but subservient to, other urban social movements. Based on these findings, I argue that the “right to the city” must be re-imagined if we are to capture the interests and social change strategies of the urban poor.

Author

• Anjuli Fahlberg, Tufts University