Critical situations: actors, processes, urban borders in dispute

• Grant number: 25/02035-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: March 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Vera da Silva Telles
• Grantee: Apoena Dias Mano
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 23/12851-7 - Evictions Observatory: interdisciplinary dimensions of risk in times of climate change and housing crisis, AP.TEM

Abstract

This activity plan encompasses the qualitative research and the fieldwork of this project, through an ethnographic approach in territories under threat or facing immediate or potential risks of forced displacement. In accordance with the definitions and guidelines outlined in this Thematic Project, the research will take place in territories characterized by "critical situations," where overlapping areas and populations being subject to housing insecurity and providing elements for examining how various risk factors affecting populations (economic, legal, and intersectional risks) and territories (environmental, technological, and urbanistic), which vary according to the age of settlements and their locations, interconnect, interact, and influence environments, living conditions, local sociability, as well as the frictions, tensions, and conflicts that accompany these processes of dispossession. The contribution of the proposed ethnographic approach, supported by the methods of qualitative research, lies in its ability to unravel the operational mechanisms through which dispossession and forced displacement occur within the situated context of urban territories. These are not automatic processes governed by an abstract rationale. Through diverse arrangements shaped by temporal and spatial circumstances, involving political, legal, and administrative devices within a complex, at times labyrinthine, network of institutions, specialized agencies, with regulatory and normative frameworks, and enforcement measures, including the open use of repressive force. This dynamic relates to the "institutional life of evictions" and the multiple dimensions of State action in these processes, as outlined in the Thematic Project, which will be further examined in all of the research areas. Ethnographic description allows for a nuanced analysis of the interplay of actors and the power relations in view of its effects on the "critical contexts" of these territories This political-institutional framework is inscribed in the territories, shaping practices and their mediations, forms of life and their circumstances, as well as the production of spaces and territories and their connections with urban life and the broader political dynamics of the city. The latent or overt conflictuality in these territories is also shaped by this political-institutional meshwork, mobilizing technical advisors, grassroots lawyers, and public defenders in the defense (or pursuit) of guarantees and rights for the affected residents.