Infrastructure financialization: the major national contractors and the São Paulo metro in transformation

Author(s)

Ana Ligia de Carvalho Magalhaes

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU/SBI)
• Defense date: 2021-08-03

Examining board members

Maria Beatriz Cruz Rufino; Jeroen Johannes Klink; Luís Fernando Massonetto

• Advisor: Maria Beatriz Cruz Rufino

Abstract

This study deals with the transformations resulting from the infrastructure financialization, analyzing the sophistication in the manner they are built, explored, and financed in the context of capitalist restructuring and the advancement of neoliberal policies and instruments. Using the forms of production concept as methodological tool for the analysis that runs through the immediate, global and total levels, the dissertation proposes the articulation between theoretical debate and empirical research to understand the new social relations of production that are established and the economics hegemonic agents that are transformed in the context of patrimonial capitalism, when the capture of rents becomes central and the infrastructures are transformed into gears of fictitious accumulation. In this context, Public-Private Partnership emerges as an instrument of the broad privatization process underway since the 1990s in Brazil, which is revealed through the case study of São Paulo\'s metro infrastructure. We work with the hypothesis that Line 4 Yellow is already guided by the financial and neoliberal logic, consolidating in its planning, construction, exploration and financing practices, revealing the progress of the infrastructures financialization process conducted by the hegemonic agents active in its provision. Among the agents, we highlight the economic groups of the great national contractors, present in the form of production by works contract of the first three metro lines and which remains in the new modeling conformed to Line 4, where they act both in the construction works and in the private exploration of the passenger transport services, through the CCR concessionaire. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 19/08842-7 - From productive restructuring to urban restructuring: an analysis of the metropolis of São Paulo from the large national contractors standpoint
• Grantee: Ana Lígia de Carvalho Magalhães
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master