Maids, machines and morality in Brazilian homes

This paper engages with debates about the increasing use of paid domestic labour in Europe and the USA contributing with a reflection about the case of Brazil. Relations of gender, class and race are considered in the deployment of maids for housework, the patterns of consumption of household technologies and the moral reasoning of daily living with hierarchical divisions within the home. The paper considers some parallels between the Brazilian context and that of more developed countries and also the specificity of Brazil. Based on participant observation, secondary data and an ethnographic study, rich empirical data are weaved through to discuss material and moral dimensions of domestic labour and care. How does the availability of cheap domestic labour configure relations of inequality? How are social differences in the home lived with and justified? The exploration of the Brazilian case illuminates some of the problems, contradictions and possible consequences of wealthier households benefitting from the displacement of poor women that is currently happening through international migration. The paper argues that in Brazil the deflecting of tensions in gender divisions of labour in households onto a subordinate person has affected relations of equality between women and men and also the patterns of technological innovation to facilitate housework. These are outcomes to be guarded against in Europe and the United States in face of the current trends in 'global woman' relations

Insurgent regeneration: Spatial practices of citizenship in the rehabilitation of inner city São Paulo

The city centre of São Paulo has increasingly become a key site for local housing movements to challenge the rules and practices of differentiated citizenship in urban Brazil. This is in line with Sassen’s analysis arguing that the last two decades have seen an increasingly urban articulation of global struggles, and a growing use of urban space to make political claims. Organised vacant buildings and occupations led by social movements in the centre of São Paulo are prominent examples of urban spaces being appropriated to advance the claims of otherwise marginalised urban subjects. In the face of rising inequalities and social and spatial divisions across the city, squatted buildings emerge as a space of negotiation with political consequences at various times and scales. Apart from acquiring a symbolic value in the debate over regeneration and gentrification processes in the inner city area of São Paulo, vacant building occupations are simultaneously intended by their proponents as a means to provide shelter to those in need; experiment alternative ways of producing low-income housing in well-located urban areas; and contribute to wider demands for urban reform across Brazil. This article explores in detail the spatial practices of individuals and groups occupying a building known as Ocupação Marconi. It focuses on the production of the building being seen as a device for advancing alternative formulations of citizenship, and discusses the implication of this interpretation for a renewed definition of the notion and practice of urban regeneratio