Housing Movements and the Politics of Worthiness in São Paulo

In the paper

“The neighborhood was primarily settled via a drawn-out and contentious urbanization process, including adverse land occupations and several mutirão projects.These mainly occurred during the 1980s and 1990s, coinciding with Brazil's redemocratization (Ferreira 2018;Miagusko 2011).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Ferreira 2018
• Partly supported

  The Introdução (page unavailable) describes Fazenda da Juta as containing seventeen housing developments, including 2,806 homes built through mutirão, and dates the União da Juta project to 1992–1998. The Considerações Finais (page unavailable) place the association’s origins amid major land occupations in the late 1980s. The copy does not establish that the land occupations were adverse or that the several mutirão projects mainly occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. (LLM, conf=0.82)

  cites Miagusko 2011 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“While the space of Fazenda da Juta today is largely saturated and there are no active mutirão projects in the area, it remains an important symbolic territory for the mutirão movement.”

In the paper

“To many coordinators, the rating score system was seen as a better way to make political dispositions come to bear.”

In the paper

“Similar to the land squatters mentioned in the introduction, who were seen as lacking knowledge of and respect for the association's protocols, leaders identified dissident workers as operating according to an instrumental political logic and refusing to assimilate elementary participatory codes that could ultimately convert them into worthy beneficiaries.”

In the paper

“After two years of painstaking participation in MTSTL1's activities, she had accumulated enough points to classify for a housing unit at the most recent and desirable mutirão in the middle-class neighborhood of Belém-a project landed through negotiations during PT mayor Fernando Haddad's term in office .”

In the paper

“This mechanism is used to select members for upcoming housing projects by attributing points to them according to the type of activity performed, both within origin groups and at the level of the organization.”

In the paper

“Mutirão residents can sometimes draw on technomoral constructions or more diffuse notions of worthiness rooted in values like hard work or honesty in their critiques of disorganized land occupations.At other moments, depending on the topic at hand, they might draw on these same frameworks to defend marginalized groups, or perhaps reach for entirely different frameworks.”

In the paper

“She also confided to us, in a private conversation, that she kept her private record of points for Sítio Conceição to avoid future quarrels.”

In the paper

“For example, participation in occupations yields 15 points while attendance of group meetings and payment of membership fees is worth only 1 point; marching demonstrations generate 10 points while static demonstrations earn only 5 points.”

In the paper

“Over two decades, MTSTL1 honed complex and intricate infrastructures to manage grassroots participation.”

In the paper

“These combined recognition of significant improvements to local infrastructure and services-acknowledged as victories of collective mobilization-but also concerns about insecurity and social change in the neighborhood.”

In the paper

“Francisca proudly recounted her history with the mutirão movement, which closely resembled the trajectories of the other mutirantes interviewed.”

In the paper

“Furthermore, all vividly remembered a recent past when their neighborhood lacked basic infrastructure and was itself stigmatized by outsiders.”

In the paper

“Elaine would attend meetings yet without joining demonstrations that took place during work hours.Knowingly lagging in the point hierarchy, she couldn't afford to put her stable job at risk amid increasing political and economic instability.”

In the paper

“Attributions of worthiness have long upheld the relationship between institutionalized grassroots organizations and the state but are equally present in everyday life and social distinctions among Brazil's popular classes.”

In the paper

“the ever more competitive-and morally blurred-terrain in which established housing movements fight for increasingly scarce resources.”

In the paper

“While such themes have long been central to the construction of distinctions among Brazil's popular classes, they have arguably been reinforced in recent years by changing political and policy conditions.”

In the paper

“Points were thus first envisioned as mechanisms to level out socioeconomic and subjective differences through individual effort while also facilitating the development of collective political consciousness.”

In the paper

“In response, right-wing political discourse came to attack some of these programs for supposedly undermining meritocratic principles and encouraging dependency, while also claiming they were subject to widespread fraud (Richmond 2020).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yet

  Checked before — its earlier verdict is held back until a new check runs.

  cites Richmond 2020 source

In the paper

“The period of PT government brought with it an expansion of diverse income-support policies, from minimum wage increases and higher education grants to welfarist poverty reduction programs like Bolsa Família.”

In the paper

“In Brazil, in recent years, these contestations have played out against the backdrop of dramatic social and political changes, which may have made modulations of worthiness even more volatile.”

In the paper

“They did not so much mind the strenuous bureaucracy intrinsic to any institutionalized social movement.They even sympathized with the need for a ranking score system-which, although imperfect, they reasoned, had to be in place to rationalize housing allocations and keep members engaged.”

In the paper

“It is clear that their stated goals-to shift participation from an individual and instrumental to a collective and political logicare successful to an extent.However, this varies significantly within the movement.”

In the paper

“Vargas's workerist policies and rhetoric cemented the worker as a figure deserving of recognition and respect, while at the same time intensifying vagrancy laws and moralizing discourses against segments of the population viewed as unproductive.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Fischer 2008 source

In the paper

“We believe this double dislocation of perspective-towards both internal diversity and external context-brings crucial dimensions of contentious social movement politics more clearly into focus.”

In the paper

“the drawing of boundaries between moral in-groups and out-groups is always culturally and historically situated, as subjects repurpose moral frameworks and mobilize the symbolic resources available to them (Lamont 2000).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Lamont 2000 source

In the paper

“While this means the term can be used in bounded and exclusionary ways, it also evokes principles of universal rights to housing and the moral legitimacy of challenging unjust social orders.”

In the paper

“Overall, assistance in activities promoted directly by the association or its broader political networks are far more highly valuated than attendance of meetings, to the point that, over time, it is only with a high level of political activism that one qualifies for a housing benefit.”

In the paper

“This can be seen in how different constructions of worthiness coexist and may be mobilized by the same subject at different moments.”

In the paper

“Instead, their gripe was with how worthiness was being modulated as an extension of these infrastructures of participation.”

In the paper

“Sign-in logs, identification forms, membership cards, and bookkeeping records were first established to foster transparency, reduce uncertainty, and verify the validity of claims for housing.”