Bea Wittger – författare

The Brazilian Constitution provides a remarkable set of social rights, including the right to housing. Despite this fact, struggles for decent living conditions have become key issues in the daily urban lives of many people in Brazil. Contesting the differentiated access to housing, social movements occupy empty buildings in the cities to challenge historically-rooted and excluding urban politics. Exploring the occupants' agency, Bea Wittger draws attention to the important role of female actors within the buildings. Through oral histories of participants of two squats in Rio de Janeiro, the book delivers a deep insight "from below" into their own perspectives on citizenship and gender.

The Research Network for Latin America - Ethnicity, Citizenship, Belonging investigates symbolic boundary making and notions of belonging to foster a better understanding of exclusions and inequalities in Latin America. During the last decades, all social sciences have stressed that inequalities and exclusions never rely exclusively on just one dimension of difference such as ethnicity or gender, but are rather influenced by their close relationships and mutual dependencies. This volume tries to foster the debate about "interdependencies of social categorisations", and how they are relevant to both the dynamics of the construction of belonging as well as to processes of inclusion and exclusion in past and present societies not only in Latin American but also in other regions of the world.