Contentious Politics of Slums: Understanding different Outcomes of Resistance against Removals in Rio de Janeiro

In this paper, we compare disputed public interventions taking place in Rio de Janeiro almost simultaneously since 2010 in three favelas: Rocinha, Vila Autódromo, and Morro da Providência. All three favelas were targeted by attempts at removal which were contested by residents who demanded in-situ upgrading. However, the outcomes and impacts of collective action were remarkably different. In an attempt to understand why and how they became different, the paper draws on the analytical framework of ‘contentious politics’. Compared to earlier research on various forms of contention, such as protest, social movements, or urban uprising, contentious politics shifts the focus from the emergence and organization to the outcomes and impacts of collective action. The research agenda also places an explicit focus on (contentious) interactions between makers of claims and their objects, usually political authorities. The key analytical concepts are political opportunity structures, cognitive framing processes and mobilization structures. The paper will use the contentious politics approach to understand, on the one hand, the changes in urban governance in Rio within the wider context of political, economic and discursive developments. Urban governance in Rio de Janeiro since 2008 has been characterized by (i) a historically unique political-ideological alignment of the elected authorities at the municipal, state and federal level; (ii) the city’s preparations for the hosting of several mega events, most importantly the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, spurring far-reaching urban interventions, and (iii) complementary discourses preceding and accompanying these interventions: mainly Rio’s ambition of becoming a ‘Global’ City’, but also the city’s promise of leaving a ‘social legacy’ after the World Cup and Olympics. By seeing these developments in combination, we may identify the outcome of political opportunity structures and ideological framings that direct certain public interventions towards the ‘favela city’ in general and certain favelas in particular. On the other hand, the paper will examine the structures and processes of mobilization (and demobilization) in the three favelas. The interventions provoked resistance, and one of our questions is how and to what extent resistance was shaped by the same opportunity structures and framings that provoked it. Furthermore, certain similarities in the strategies and repertoires of action are discussed, such as the mobilization of counter-expertise in order to delegitimize the municipality’s removal arguments. However, differences in terms of prior social networks and resistance experiences, as well as in the strength of the post-2010 organization of struggle, stand out in favor of Vila Autódromo. Yet, this community came out as the least successful one in hindering removal. The paper discusses whether this can be explained by the combination of spatiality and disadvantages in ‘political opportunity structures’, since Vila Autódromo was placed next to the Olympic Park under construction and, consequently, faced a power structure with huge economic and political vested interests in seeing its removal.