Insurgent Citizens

1
Insurgent Citizens

• Kyle, Leoni, Ashley, and Catherine

2
What is Insurgent Citizenship?

• Insurgency an uprising against constituted
  authority.
• Citizenship a measure of differences and means
  of distancing people from another.

3
What is Insurgent Citizenship?

• Examples of a movement
• Sudan Liberation Movements

4
What is Insurgent Citizenship?
5
Creation of Insurgent Citizens (Kyle)

• Social Factors
• Economic Factors
• Political Factors

6
Economics Factors

• Economic opportunities lead to a massive influx
  of rural migrants, which creates overcrowding.
• Export-oriented nature of the Brazilian economy
  does not lead to the rise of organized labor,
  instead, masses of unskilled workers.
• High wealth inequality in Brazilian society.

7
Political Factors

• Urban development programs compound economic
  roots of overcrowding to entice more rural
  out-migration.
• Relative lack of urban planning contributes to
  the concentration of the poor in the favelas.
• Democratization of social struggles, post-1985
• Rise of Lula and the Workers Party

8
Social Factors

• Religious groups- the Catholic Church and
  evangelical movements.
• Latifundios, inequality of land ownership and the
  rise of the Movimiento Sem Terra (MST)
• Increasingly youthful demographics
• Urban crime.

9
Methods of action/ mobilization insurgent
citizens engage in
10
Founding Mobilizations

• Taken from assessments of insurgents in Brazil,
  scholars have found their mobilizations have
  developed not primarily through struggles of
  labor but through those of the city--particularly
  illegal residence, house building, and land
  conflict.

11
What does this mean?

• Mostly rural area has become mostly urban
• Simultaneously, we live in an era of
  unprecedented global democratization during which
  the number of electoral democracies has doubled
  since 1970, increasing in just 30 years from 33
  to 63 of the world's sovereign states.
• combined developments in particular places
  produce a remarkably similar condition worldwide
  most city people live in impoverished urban
  peripheries in various conditions of illegal and
  irregular residence, around urban centers that
  benefit from their services and their poverty.
• Yet this new urbanism also generates a
  characteristic response worldwide precisely in
  these peripheries, residents organize movements
  of insurgent citizenship to confront the
  entrenched regimes of citizen inequality that the
  urban centers use to segregate them.

12
What actions do insurgents participate in?

• Conflict/violence
• Autoconstruction
• Protests
• Petition

13
What do they wish to achieve?

• Change
• urbanization of their neighborhoods, forcing the
  state to provide infrastructure and access to
  health services, schools, and child care
• Equal rights/voice against elites
• Representation

14
Insurgent Citizens Power

• Power of the insurgent movement is based on the
  size of the movement
• The more cohesive the movement, the better chance
  they have at gaining social change

15
More influential than institutional reforms?

• There are many examples of insurgent citizens
  changing the climate of the favela
• Rio de Janiero is an example in the fight against
  corrupt police and gangs

16
Still a long road ahead

• Conditions in the favelas in Brazil are still in
  poor conditions and the citizens (even when they
  turn insurgent) do not have the same privileges
  as those in the urban centers of the cities
• Success is still very minor in gaining full rights

17
Taking the past and forming a new future

• In the case of Sao Paulo, insurgent citizens take
  the past oppression of being forced to the
  outskirts of the urban area and produce a future
  with a new type of citizenry
• Thus, the status quo of the urban residents is
  changing with the emergence of insurgent citizens

18
Questions

• Why might insurgent citizens be more active in
  Brazil than the United States?
• Over time, some insurgents have tried different
  approaches in order to attempt to obtain change
  rather than partaking in violence/conflict, they
  have tried peaceful protests and petitions and
  have generated legal framework yet still no
  change has occurred what method do you think
  gains more of an audience for the cause?
• Do you think insurgent citizens can truly change
  the status quo and bring about social changes to
  the favelas in Brazil?