The MTST Politics of Social Rights: Counter-Conducts, Acts of Citizenship and a Radical Struggle Beyond Housing

Abstract

The Brazilian Movimento dos Trabalhadores sem Teto (MTST)-Homeless Workers' Movement-is a social movement that struggles for housing and for a radical transformation of capitalistic socioeconomic relations. The present paper offers a problematization of the movement's plea to social rights. They are part of the movement's discourse and strategy. However, the activists' objective is more radical: they aim at a complete transformation of the Brazilian economy and society. By first discussing two sets of literatures-Critical Legal Theory and Governmentality Studies-this article illustrates the complexity and the ambivalences of a radical politics of rights. Then, by contrasting my ongoing ethnographic research with the work of James Holston and Lucy Earle, I discuss the relevance of a citizenship framework for the MTST's struggle. Finally, inspired by Foucault's concept of counter-conducts, the article argues that the movement's politics of rights represents an effective tactic to contrast neoliberal governmentality and to create radical democratic spaces of struggle and collective resistance.

Urban Housing Inequity: Housing Deprivation and Social Response in the City of Naples

“…In Croatia, the Human Shield movement was structured in a real party that expressed a candidate in the presidential elections collecting in 2014 (16.42%) who managed, in 2015, to express an MP [65]. The struggle for housing thus became a component of a series of broader social demands [66], always in a sense of opposition to the neoliberal system [43]. In Europe, some movements are also developing a transnational dimension, such as the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City, which brings together groups from over 20 countries [67].…”