Environment & Urbanization

World leading environmental and urban studies journal

Favela: Four decades of living on the edge in Rio de Janeiro

Author: 
Janice
Perlman

Focus country: 
BRAZIL

Focus city: 
RIO DE JANEIRO

Published by: 
University Press

Publisher town: 
New York

Year: 
2010

The changing experiences of Rio’s low-income populations are captured in this book, which reports on the fortunes of a set of families. Janice Perlman returned to find out what had happened to the 200 favela residents and 50 community leaders in three settlements that she first researched in the late 1960s. The research team managed to locate 41 per cent of the 750 families. To augment the emerging understanding of their lives and associated trajectories, the life histories of their children and grandchildren were also explored. Finally, an additional random sample of 400 households (and 25 community leaders) in each of the original three locations was identified in order to explore any differences in the findings.

The chapters explore a number of issues related to the realities of having low incomes and/or being otherwise disadvantaged in Rio de Janeiro. The overlapping themes of exclusion, violence, crime and social stigmatization due to residential location emerge repeatedly. The discussion combines historic findings, the new set of research findings (both in terms of survey data and life stories) and a political and economic analysis of significant events. The emerging picture highlights the problems that households have faced and continue to face. Some of them have been removed from central to more peripheral locations in the city; others have managed to stay in the same place for decades. Many have tried for respectability, in some cases for themselves but often for their children, and some have succeeded, and one key theme of the volume is an attempt to understand why such differentiations have emerged. Families have faced a lack of employment opportunities and increasing levels of extortion from militia and/or drug gangs. Democratization has taken place in Brazil since the original research and the volume captures the perceptions of community leaders as they explain their disappointment about the politics that they have engaged with over the period. Later chapters in the book review the effectiveness of state policies towards both low-income citizens and favela residents, suggesting reasons for successes and failures.

The dynamics of maturing lives combine with the evolution of the city across the themes of the chapters. The emerging picture shows how spatial redesign, political ambivalence and social discrimination have constrained the lives of Rio’s informal settlement dwellers. The discussion explores the meanings of development and why it has only been achieved on a limited scale. Perlman argues that the residents of the favelas that she studied have managed to improve their lives “…but the same gains do not exist for the newer favelas” (page 256). Moreover, despite the difficulties in assessment, it appears that unemployment has increased, and for those in employment, work is less secure. Whatever these figures say, the closing chapters emphasize a growing optimism. Despite the problems that they face, the younger generation increasingly believes that their lives will improve over the next five years.

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