URBAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND INSURGENT PERIPHERAL CITIZENSHIPS: THE STRUGGLE OF CALABAR RESIDENTS (SALVADOR, BA) FOR THE RIGHT TO THE CITY

Abstract

Since the 1970s, residents of the Calabar neighborhood in Salvador (Bahia) began to politically organize themselves as a way to pressure public authorities to recognize the legality of their occupation and mobilize interventions to improve the quality of life in the community. This was how the Young United of Calabar movement (JUC) emerged, and later, the Residents' Association, which led to a series of other local organizations, such as the Open School of Cabalar and the Calabar Community Library. In this sense, this article sought to understand, based on the experiences of a group of Calabar residents in Salvador (Bahia), the senses and meanings involved in the political struggle of this community for the realization of the right to the city and citizenship in a peripheral context. For this purpose, a survey was carried out on the process of favelization in Salvador and an empirical investigation in the neighborhood, interviewing six community residents connected to local political activism. Methodologically, a literature review was chosen to gather information on the history and social movements that occurred in the community; in-depth interviews with a semi-structured script to collect empirical data; and discourse analysis (DA) as a method of systematizing and interpreting the results. In the end, the importance of the Calabar residents' struggle was evident for a redefinition of the narrow notion of citizenship, shifting it from a static understanding to a living conception, enriched by continuous, permanent movements of territorial (re)appropriation and the claim for the right to the city.