Abstract

MIAGUSKO, Edson. The production of the state margins in São Paulo’s central area: homeless in the ruins of an abandoned prison. Etnográfica [online]. 2014, vol.18, n.1, pp.33-52. ISSN 0873-6561.

The article follows the trajectory of people with no access to housing (sem-teto) beginning with the occupation of the ruins of a prison in São Paulo’s central area. From the “invasion” to the organization of a social movement of homeless people, from their disorganization to the insertion of drug dealing, we understand the occupations as practices of the state in its margins. Thus, the state not only creates the occupations by these homeless with its’ practices, but it also establishes the degree of tolerance and the boundaries between political action, management methods and criminalization. The construction of these margins of the state, the legal and the illegal, the licit and the illicit, starts from the practice in the state and its margins as key places where these definitions are established and that also respond to the homeless’ agency.

Keywords : homeless; housing; center areas; urban reclassification; state; São Paulo.

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