Vol. 16 No. 32 (2025): Communities and possible worlds. Community experiences and practices of resistance in neoliberal rationality
Articles

Social Vulnerability and the Right to Housing in Brazil: An Example of Urban Resistance

Salyanna de Souza Silva
Department of Social Services, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Brazil
Bio
Gisele Caroline Ribeiro Anselmo
Department of Social Services, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil
Bio
Francesca Cubeddu
Scuola IaD, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
Bio

Published 2025-12-30

Keywords

  • resistance,
  • resilience,
  • social vulnerability,
  • Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto,
  • culture

How to Cite

de Souza Silva , S., Ribeiro Anselmo, G. C., & Cubeddu, F. (2025). Social Vulnerability and the Right to Housing in Brazil: An Example of Urban Resistance. SocietàMutamentoPolitica, 16(32), 87–97. https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-16181

Abstract

The awareness of a given phenomenon involves the implementation of an organised and defined solution based on the perception of social insecurity and exposure to different forms of inequality (economic, social and cultural). From these processes emerge forms of resilience and resistance, i.e. the capacity of an individual, a community or a society to adapt, endure and emerge from problematic and critical situations. In Brazil, there are numerous examples of social movements as a collective form of resistance that fight for land and housing, both in rural and more urbanised areas. Such as the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (MTST). Starting from the concept of resilience and social resistance, this work aims to analyse the forms that these take, through the actions of the Movement, to provide social responses to combat inequality and poverty. In the first part, more of a theoretical nature, the different declinations and modes of expression of the concepts of resilience and social resistance will be highlighted. In the second part, these concepts will be declined by analysing the work of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (MTST), in the implementation of rights, opportunities and in defining criteria for social justice.

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