O campo social da situação de rua violência e segregação

Abstract

Street dwellers population is a world phenomenon which must be understood as part of social structures of class and of power. This research project places at the centre of its reflection the search for the specificities pertaining the social space of homelessness in the case-study of São Paulo. It identifies the power structures and hierarchies that are respective of this Field. The aim is to test the Field model with the street dweller population and the hypothesis that the greater the entaglement with institutional structures of services in social assistance, the lower will be the population’s position in the social hierarchy specific to the Field. In order to do so, the research sistematizes the evolution of the concept of homelessness as well as different approaches. The research engages with the forms of public policies that offer care as well as with the relationships between growth index of the population that find overnight shelter and the growth index of economic activities. Finally, the research concludes at the formation of group compositions and position within the hierarchy. Drawing from primary and secondary data, the research demonstrates the establishment of relationship networks, of street resources understanding as well of the possibilities to quickly solve situations of risk such as Survival Capital, which circulates, within the streets, as symbolic capital. This process implies the discussion of the acquired habitus within street socialization and the search for breaking with the dispositions produced by status negotiations and subalternity defined by the interaction with institutions. The research hypotheses were confirmed, and amongst their many divergents aspects, the highlights are the degree of institutionalization - or resistance to institutionalization - as well as the racist and patriarchal roots of inequality and of the Brazilian civil-territorial model