Public Policies in Favelas and the Production of Urban Inequalities in Rio De Janeiro

Abstract

In the past three decades, we have witnessed the worldwide development of new economic dynamics that have intensified the most perverse and harmful effects of globalization processes. The global economy has increasingly produced intense social vulnerability and has driven a large number of people out of the center of the economic and social order (Sassen, 2016). This economic model responds to a logic of financialization of all domains of social life, imposed by different political choices and decisions that result in the degradation of working conditions and the increase of precariousness and insecurity throughout the world (Harvey, 1985). These consequences are not new and have already been described and analyzed by authors such as Serge Paugam (1991), Robert Castel (1995), and Didier Fassin (1996), among others. However, as Saskia Sassen (2016) points out, in a broader sense, this logic of financialization and production of new inequalities underway in the contemporary world can be seen as a more profound systemic underlying tendency that articulates realities that unite us. They often seem disconnected, and their modes of action, which can be characterized by their complexity, may include different dynamics and even coexist with economic growth.