What is Insurgent Citizenship?

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					Insurgent Citizens

       Rochina: Largest favela in Rio
  What is Insurgent Citizenship?
 Insurgency: an uprising against constituted

 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
       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
    Building dwellings
    Conflict over obtaining
 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,
   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
 The more cohesive the
  movement, the better
  chance they have at
  gaining social change
More influential than institutional
 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

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