Pathways to urban citizenship for low-income migrants in São Paulo

Abstract

Recent waves of migrants are establishing an increasingly visible presence in the urban landscape of São Paulo, both in its centre and its peripheries. Though a city with a rich history of immigration and diversity, the arrival of migrants in recent decades has not been accompanied by specific municipal policies for the migrant population, an absence which affects in particular, low-income migrants. Urban social movements for migration take on the role of attempting to govern migration in the city by providing everyday support to migrants as well as mobilising them as a political group to demand changes on both national and municipal scales; yet these movements have limitations. The paper thus also highlights the agency of migrants in accessing their rights through empowering micro-level social networks and through individual negotiations with legal possibilities. Drawing on examples of institutional, activist and migrant practices in addressing questions of inclusion and exclusion in the city, the paper will trace the multiple and still fragmented ways of articulating rights and developing a sense of urban citizenship as newer waves of migrants join the urban landscape of São Paulo.

Keywords::

• cities
• citizenship
• migrants
• agency

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), to Eduardo Marques and colleagues at the Centre for Metropolitan Studies for their insights into urban Brazil, and to all who shared their experiences with me during fieldwork. I am grateful for the helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper from participants at the RC21 Conference 2013, and from the anonymous reviewers and journal editors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. It is already widely acknowledged that earlier histories of migration to Brazil have jointly constructed the nation's rich ethnic diversity.

^2. It is worth recalling the history of citizenship in Brazil which demonstrates that there is no linear or singular pathway to ‘full citizenship’, as highlighted by de Carvalho (2002). He demonstrates that in the Brazilian case, some rights prevailed over others in different historical periods and that it was in fact social rights, instituted in periods of dictatorship, which emerged before political and civil rights. This is an inversion of Marshall's (1950) model of citizenship of civil, then political and finally social rights.

^3. Taking citizenship its in broadest sense without assuming that one must hold political membership in a nation-state to be included in discussions of citizenship. See Isin's (2008, 2009) work on ‘acts of citizenship’ and also discussions on ‘post-national’ citizenship (Soysal 1994), ‘the right to have rights’ (Benhabib 2004) and transnational citizenship (Baubock 1994).

^4. Pseudonyms have been used in place of the real names of my fieldwork informants (individuals and civil society groups).

^5. For instance, in Germany, access to the universal healthcare system is based on holding legal status, making medical aid an important site for citizen protest on behalf of migrants (Castañeda 2013).

^6. Though in other aspects, there have been criticisms in how Haitians were portrayed in national media and about the introduction of quotas on the number of humanitarian residence visas granted.

^7. When I write ‘the social movement for migrants’, I mean it to be one that is a loose grouping of heterogeneous entities which do not always share the same agenda.

^8. It is also worth noting that for some migrants, an orientation to securing citizenship rights as overseas citizens of their ‘homelands’ is perhaps more salient than fighting for such rights in the countries and/or cities to which they migrate. See e.g. (FitzGerald 2000; Rodriguez 2002).

^9. Silva (2012, 22) writes of the Praça Padre Bento, that with the increase of people, conflicts started to occur and Bolivians were accused of dirtying the locale, attracting assailants and drug trafficking. Bothered by this presence, the residents created a petition demanding the removal of these intrusions, including placing a sign in the square, “this square is ours! We demand respect, we have been there for more than one hundred years”. After a long process of negotiation, the municipality offered Bolivians a different locale in the same neighbourhood, named by them as Praça Kantuta.

^10. It is worth pointing out that many urban migrants continue to be employed in the informal sector. The predominance of informal labour is a reality yet still one of the biggest obstacles to accessing rights, both amongst migrants and Brazilians (Draibe 1993; Santos 1979).

^11. See Marques (2012) for a thorough discussion on the importance of relations and social networks in understanding dynamics of poverty reproduction.

^12. A contrast can be seen in Varsanyi's (2006) study of undocumented Mexican migrants in the United States and the possibilities that exist for urban citizenship even in the absence of documents and political membership in the national community.

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted as part of a postdoctoral research project supported by the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CEBRAP, USP), grant number 2013/07616-7, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). The author is responsible for opinions and conclusions.