Resisting, Claiming and Prefiguring: Movements for Dignified Housing in São Paulo

The struggle for the right to dignified housing in São Paulo, Brazil, waged by low-income black families organized in housing movements, is a political struggle that intertwines three dimensions: resisting, claiming and prefiguring the future. This article discusses ‘Occupation Mauá’, an occupied building in the city centre of São Paulo. More than 200 families that live in this occupation, for more than 10 years now, resist against gentrification processes, claim public policy from the state and imagine a new life for themselves—in that building, with those families, in that region of the city. These families have already obtained a major political achievement in resisting, claiming and imagining their future by connecting the struggle for a dignified present to the one for a dignified future. This achievement sees in the state an agent of both death and life. The state performs death when it evicts homeless families; yet, it is also the object of struggles as an agent of public policy. The struggle of urban housing movements in Brazil is thus a life-and-death struggle.