The Situational Impact of Inequalities on Urban Public Space: Lessons from Homeless Women in Covid-19 São Paulo

How do intersectional inequalities impact on the physical-material and social setting of urban public space? Based on the extraordinary increase of family homelessness in Latin America’s largest metropolis during the Covid-19 pandemic, Fraya Frehse (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil) will address in her presentation how homeless women mobilized categories regarding class, gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, age, etc. to sustain their lives and families in the São Paulo streets and squares (2020-2022). Ethnographic data on these women’s social-reproductive, bodily, and materially mediated face-to-face interactions with (non-)humans and objects therein help assess a twofold hypothesis. Intersectional asymmetries interfere with the production of public space situationally. Family belonging features a marker of difference in these situations.

Introduction: Barbara Göbel (Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Mecila)

More information about the Lecture Series “Diversity/Medialities”