Beyond the Favelas: An Analysis of Intraurban Poverty Patterns in Brazil

Abstract

Despite evidence to the contrary, favelas still loom large in Brazilian social imaginary as the quintessential poverty pockets. No study to date has systematically examined the place of favelas within the broader geographies of poverty in Brazilian cities. How prominent are these settlements in the context of urban poverty? How do they fare when compared with other kinds of poor settlements? We tackled these questions by examining the sociospatial patterns of the poor population living in five metropolitan areas across the Brazilian territory. Using tract-level data from the 2010 census, we compared favela and non-favela residents through exploratory, inferential, and spatial analyses. Our results suggest that, although sharing the same socioeconomic and ethnic profile, favela and non-favela households are contrastingly distributed across urban spaces: Whereas favela inhabitants tend to live nearer city centers, non-favela inhabitants tend to concentrate in peripheries. This finding has multidimensional implications. At the empirical dimension it reinforces the importance of evidence-based geographical targeting for poverty alleviation policies. At the technical-normative dimension it challenges the official geospatial definition of favela currently in use. At the epistemological dimension it calls attention to the politics of labeling—calling a settlement a favela helps produce it as such—and how scholars must be critical of them.

尽管存在着相反的证据, 做为典型贫困区的棚户区, 仍然明显地存在于巴西社会中。目前, 没有基于巴西城市贫困地理框架的系统性棚户区研究。在城市贫困背景下, 这些居住区有多么显著？同其它贫困区相比, 这些棚户区如何演变？为了回答这些问题, 本文研究了五个巴西都市区贫困人口的社会空间模式。利用2010年人口普查数据, 通过探索的、推理的和空间的分析, 我们比较了棚户区和非棚户区居民。结果发现, 尽管具有相同的社会经济和种族特征, 棚户区和非棚户区家庭在城市的空间分布上有很大不同。棚户区居民分布在距离城市中心很近的地方, 而非棚户区居民分布在城市外围。这一发现有多重意义：经验上, 它强调了基于证据的地理定向对于脱贫政策的重要性；技术和规范上, 它挑战了目前对棚户区的地理定义；认识论上, 它强调了标签政治（把居住区叫做棚户区, 会促进棚户区的产生）和专家的重要性。

Pese a la evidencia en contrario, las favelas todavía se proyectan claramente en el imaginario social brasileño como típicas troneras de la pobreza. Hasta ahora ningún estudio ha examinado sistemáticamente el lugar de las favelas dentro de las más amplias geografías de la pobreza en las ciudades brasileñas. ¿Qué tan prominentes son estos asentamientos en el contexto de la pobreza urbana? ¿Cómo les va cuando se las compara con otras clases de asentamientos pobres? Abordamos estos interrogantes examinando los patrones socioespaciales de la población pobre que vive en cinco áreas metropolitanas a través del territorio brasileño. Usando datos a nivel de zonas del censo de 2010, comparamos residentes de favelas y de no-favelas a través de análisis exploratorio, inferencial y espacial. Nuestros resultados sugieren que, si bien comparten el mismo perfil socioeconómico y étnico, los hogares de favelas y no-favelas están distribuidos de modo contrastivo a través de los espacios urbanos. Mientras que los habitantes de las favelas tienden a vivir más cerca de los centros urbanos, los pobres de las no-favelas tienden a concentrarse en las periferias. Este hallazgo tiene implicaciones multidimensionales. En dimensión empírica, así se refuerza la importancia de la focalización geográfica basada en evidencia dentro de las políticas de alivio de la pobreza. En la dimensión técnico-normativa, este hallazgo reta la definición geoespacial oficial del término favela actualmente en uso. En una dimensión epistemológica esto reclama atención a las políticas de etiquetado ––llamar favela a un asentamiento ayuda a que le lo reconozca como tal–– y a cómo deban criticarlas los eruditos.

Key Words:

• Brazil
• favela
• periphery
• poverty
• spatial analysis

关键词:

• 巴西
• 棚户区
• 外围
• 贫困
• 空间分析

Palabras clave:

• análisis espacial
• Brasil
• favela
• periferia
• pobreza

Acknowledgments

We thank Claudio Stenner for clarifying some aspects of the IBGE database. The final result, of course, is the authors’ sole responsibility.

Notes

1 We considered the exchange rate in December 2010, when US$1.00 was worth BRL1.66.

2 Because the residential built-up area for the year 1990 is not available, we considered the figure for the year 2000 (100 km²). Thus, it is probable that in 1990 the 44 km² of informal housing made up half of the total residential area.

3 IBGE has recently released a new geospatial database, which might have corrected the inconsistences of the 2010 version. Unfortunately, we could not use this database to analyze the 2010 census data. The next census has not been undertaken yet.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Higher Education Improvement Coordination (CAPES) in the form of a PhD Scholarship granted to Camila Carvalho.

Notes on contributors

Camila Carvalho

CAMILA CARVALHO is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate Program of Architecture and Urban Planning at Universidade Federal Fluminense, 24220-900, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected]. She is also a visiting student at University College Dublin. Her PhD project explores the spatial scales of inequality in urban Brazil. She is interested in urban geography, GIScience, poverty, and inequality in the Global South.

Diogo de Carvalho Cabral

DIOGO DE CARVALHO CABRAL is Assistant Professor in Environmental History at the School of Histories and Humanities of Trinity College Dublin, 2, Ireland. E-mail: [email protected]. He is interested in the spatial and socioenvironmental dynamics in modern Brazil, including human–animal relations.