Institution: Mega-Cities Project, Hunter College
E-mail: Jperlman@megacities.org
Biosummary:
Title: The dynamics of the urban poor and implications for public policy
Theme: Key 1
In 1968-69 Dr. Janice Perlman lived and conducted research in the favelas (squatter settlements) of Rio de Janeiro, interviewing 750 residents about their life histories, survival strategies, belief systems, and behaviors. She also interviewed the major national, state, and local decision-makers responsible for low-income housing policy at the time, as well as those involved in alternative approaches. She returned four years later for a follow-up study of those favelados who had been forcibly removed and relocated in public housing projects and a comparative look at housing policies in other metropolitan areas in Brazil. The resulting book, The Myth of Marginality: Urban Politics and Poverty in Rio de Janeiro, (with an Introduction by Fernando Henrique Cardoso), was published in English by the University of California Press and in Portuguese by Editora Paz e Terra, and won the C. Wright Mills Award in 1976.
In addition to the insights it provided about the role of poverty and the lives of the poor in Rio de Janeiro, the research contributed to the debate on marginality and dependency, and served as a grounded critique of the prevailing negative stereotypes about migrants and squatters which fostered the eradication policies. The findings discredited the assumption that favelados were "marginal elements" - criminals, prostitutes, subversive malcontents, parasites on the economy, and threatening to political stability. In short, the problem was not the "lack of integration into urban life but the asymmetrical terms of that integration." She concluded that "the myths of marginality" were empirically false, analytically misleading, and devastating in their policy implications.
Dr. Perlman and a team of researchers from the Institute of Urban and Regional Policy and Planning of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro have embarked on a re-study of the original favelados from three decades ago. This new study builds upon the foundations and conclusions of the original research, tracing the life histories of the original interviewees and their families and communities over the past 30 years. The original data sets are intact, and the research team has been able to locate a surprisingly high percentage of original interviewees, providing an opportunity for longitudinal poverty and mobility research that has never before been possible.
The idea is to map the social, residential, and economic mobility in individual life trajectories against the macro-political transition from ditadura to abertura to democracia and the macro-economic trends from booms to busts to frozen assets to recurring inflation to a reasonably stabilized currency since the "Plano Real" went into effect. The researchers will also analyze the impact of recent local public policies such as "Favela-Bairro" on individuals, community groups and neighborhoods, and of national policies such as "Comunidade Solidaria." One of the research questions is whether those settlements which had stronger internal networks and associations were better able to take advantage of opportunities offered by new local and national policies, and whether they were part of the pressure groups articulating the needs for such policies. Additionally, by looking at squatter upgrading policies over this period, we will provide a knowledge base useful to decision-makers in urban development on the local, national, and international scales.
The answers this research could cut through reams of ideological arguments in setting macro and micro policies to reduce poverty and to expand the labor force, the consumer market, and the voting citizenry of these major world cities.