Gender, Poverty, and Financial Precarity in the Peripheries of São Paulo, Brazil

Talk by Assistant Professor Elisa Favaro Verdi, University of São Paulo.

This talk draws on long-term ethnographic research in the metropolitan peripheries of São Paulo (Brazil) to examine how gender, poverty, and financial precarity are entangled in everyday life. Focusing on processes of land regularization and household indebtedness, it explores how access to land and housing is increasingly mediated by debt relations that reshape forms of belonging, obligation, and survival.

Grounded in feminist political economy and theories of social reproduction, the analysis highlights how women navigate and sustain life under conditions of socio-spatial segregation and financial pressure. Rather than treating debt solely as an economic mechanism, the talk approaches it as a social relation that structures urban governance and everyday practices in the peripheries.

Bio

Elisa Favaro Verdi is a geographer and Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of São Paulo (USP), Department of Geography. She is currently a Guest Researcher at the University of Copenhagen. Her research engages with urban geography, feminist political economy, and social reproduction, focusing on metropolitan peripheries in São Paulo. She examines the intersections between socio-spatial segregation, debt, and urban policy, with particular attention to land regularization processes and financial precarity.