Participation in Housing Movements by the Urban Poor in São Paulo:

• In Event: Reimagining/ destroying the cities?

Abstract

The paper tries to identify the way in which the urban poor participate in social movements, in the case of the housing movement (União dos Movimentos de Moradia: UMM) em São Paulo, which was not explained by previous studies. It analyzes the interactive relationships between the urban poor in collective actions and the participatory governance, which is one of the structural changes in Brazil since the democratization in 1985, addressing the agency of the urban poor including the elderly people. The basic theoretical framework is sociological and it analyzes the interactive relationships between agents and structure, based on the Political Opportunity Structure theory. It analyzes three main case studies involving the urban poor in São Paulo. In the first and second case studies, the subject is the urban poor at large, and in the third case study, the subject is the elderly poor. The first case study examines Mutirão, which is a participatory housing policy for the urban poor where they construct their own houses by collective actions. The second case study analyzes the results of the three field surveys on Mutirão and its participants. The third case study investigates the housing movements of the urban elderly poor and the Municipal Housing Council, which is a participatory governance manner. The last case study is about the urban elderly poor, regarded as more socially excluded and vulnerable agents amongst the urban poor at large, who could realize the Village of the Elderly People (Vila dos Idosos) project.

Author

• Ryohei Konta, Institute of Developing Economies-Japan External Trade Organization (IDE-JETRO)