Rochina: Largest favela in Rio Insurgent Citizens Rochina: Largest favela in Rio
What is Insurgent Citizenship? Insurgency: an uprising against constituted authority. Citizenship: a measure of differences and means of distancing people from another.
Insurgency; Military Dimension
Insurgent Citizenship: More Widespread than a single region Sudan Liberation Movements
Creation of Insurgent Citizens) Social Factors Economic Factors Political Factors Vertical Favela
Social Factors Inequality of land ownership Movimiento Sem Terra (MST) Cityward Migration Religion : in Latin America Catholic Church and Evangelical Movements Increasingly youthful demographics Urban crime.
Economics Factors Economic opportunities lead to a massive influx of rural migrants Overcrowding results Brazil - export-oriented nature of does not favor the rise of organized labor Unskilled workers often in informal economy Income Low Per-capita income High wealth inequality
Political Factors Urban development programs increase attractiveness of cities Urban planning hapzard Contributes to the concentration of the poor in the favelas Favela residents become insurgent citizens In Brazil Post 1985 democratization increases influence of insurgent citizens Rise of Lula and the Workers Party
Methods of action/ mobilization employed by insurgent citizens
What triggers mobilizations? Urban struggle Occupying land as squatters Building dwellings Conflict over obtaining services Labor struggles not as important as supposed
What does this mean? Mostly rural area has become mostly urban Simultaneously, we live in an era of unprecedented global democratization during which the number of electoral democracies has doubled since 1970, increasing in just 30 years from 33 to 63 % of the world's sovereign states. combined developments in particular places produce a remarkably similar condition worldwide: most city people live in impoverished urban peripheries in various conditions of illegal and irregular residence, around urban centers that benefit from their services and their poverty. Yet this new urbanism also generates a characteristic response worldwide: precisely in these peripheries, residents organize movements of insurgent citizenship to confront the entrenched regimes of citizen inequality that the urban centers use to segregate them.
Critical actions of Insurgent citizens Auto-construction Protests Petition Crime & violence
What do they wish to achieve? Change urbanization of their neighborhoods, forcing the state to provide infrastructure and access to health services, schools, and child care Equal rights/voice against elites Representation
Insurgent Citizens’ Power Power of the insurgent movement is based on the size of the movement The more cohesive the movement, the better chance they have at gaining social change
More influential than institutional reforms? There are many examples of insurgent citizens changing the climate of the favela Rio de Janiero is an example in the fight against corrupt police and gangs
Still a long road ahead… Conditions in the favelas in Brazil ( and all Latin American shantytowns) remain poor conditions Citizens (even when they turn “insurgent”) do not have the same privileges as those in the urban centers of the cities Success in gaining full rights remains the exception
Insurgent Citizens Data from Sao Paulo Shaped by the tradition of being forced to the outskirts of the urban area Strive to build a future with a new type of citizenry Some evidence that the quality of life in city is improving because of the emergence of insurgent citizens