Understanding urban poverty in Brazil through the people and their life stories

Resumo

Since the 1990s, our view of urban poverty has broadened to include concepts such as exclusion, vulnerability, and violence, rather than being confined to economic factors. This article seeks to demonstrate the value of surveying the everyday life of precarious settlements so that an understanding can be obtained of the dynamics of the spatial and social integration of the urban poor. A qualitative approach has been adopted that links poverty, mobility, social networks and State action and it is argued that informal settlements are spatial traps since an individual perspective and exploitative relationships are superseding collective action. The use of the life stories of the residents of precarious settlements serves as a means of overcoming prejudices and show how the struggle for a place in the city takes place. They have emerged as a powerful instrument for understanding urban poverty and helping define public policies and thus combat the problem of continuous mobility and spatial segregation, vulnerability and exclusion. Moreover, they reveal that, although expressing their right to the city, the struggle for a place in the city is not over.