Women at periphery of urban planning: subordinated informality, detached autonomy and resistance in São Paulo, Mumbai and Durban

Abstract

Subordinated informality and detached autonomy are two sides of the same coin: there is no neutrality of being informal at the borders of capitalism. Therefore, an automatic transition from informal to formal seems impossible, once its role is being a reserve of arms and lands by subaccumulation and superaccumulation. Subaccumulation because it is left only compulsory survival work. Superaccumulation because it is extracted not only labor rights, but also all social reproduction of labor force system, including workers territories. There is great decision and assets assimetry, as a result of unequal arrangements of power and subordination, such as gender, race, caste and class discrimination at the three cities. Informally occupied lands by informal workers become captured territories for future real estate production. Their arms, as work force surplus, act with great pressure towards earnings reduction and formal job turnover. Three countries’ exclusionary regimes of land and labor market have been crucial in order to mantain a rationed citizenship that allows of a twofold exit: one, virtuous, through progressive sectors linkages with great or little accomplishments; other, vicious, with a complex citizenship market, through bridges in order to have rights access. This exception management has been built by sociability networks at the periphery in order to guarantee minimum survival issues, through not only specific own internal hierarchal arrangements, but also through State and NGOs role.