Evictions and Relocations in Rio de Janeiro
I carried out research in Rio de Janeiro between 2012 and 2014 on the impacts of urban housing evictions and social housing relocations – mobilisations that were being supported through ‘global city’ narratives and imperatives, fueled by the city’s successive hosting of sporting megaevents. The work combined the larger question of unwanted resettlement to issues of gendered everyday domestic lives and employment. It was widely disseminated in academic, media and policy spheres.
The research was funded by: Urban Age, STICERD, Santander Travel Grants (2012 and 2014), LSE Research Seed Funding Grant and an Asia Research Centre Grant.
This book (Palgrave, 2017) offers a close look at forced evictions, drawing on empirical studies and conceptual frameworks from both the Global North and South. It draws attention to arenas where multiple logics of urban dispossession, violence and insecurity are manifest, and where wider socio-economic, political and legal struggles converge.
BOOK CHAPTER: Fernández Arrigoitia, M. (2016) ‘Unsettling resettlements: community, belonging and livelihood in Rio de Janeiro’s Minha Casa Minha Vida’ in Brickell, K., Fernández Arrigoitia, M. And and Vasudevan, A. (eds)Geographies of Forced Eviction: Dispossession, Violence, Insecurity, Palgrave.
ESSAY: Fernández Arrigoitia, M. (2013) ‘Relocating homes and lives in Rio’s Olympic city’, City Transformations, Urban Age.
REPORT: Policy research with (now Emeritus) Professor Christine Whitehead, funded by City Alliance and the Brazilian Ministry of Cities, comparing the financial mechanisms of the Brazilian Minha Casa Minha VIda (social housing) programme to those in the EU (Brazil – European Union Sector Dialogues on Housing Finance and Subsidies).