LAC Main Seminar Series: The Situational Dimension of Intersectional Inequalities in post-Covid Urban Public Spaces in Latin America

Situational space matters in the daily experience of intersectional inequalities in Latin America. Like other metropolises, São Paulo has registered an extraordinary increase of women-headed family homelessness during the pandemic. This talk addresses how social categories of difference contribute to the physical-material and social setting of urban public spaces in post-Covid Latin America. It asks how female heads of homeless families have mobilised categories regarding class, race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality and age in streets and squares of the region’s largest metropolis to sustain their lives and families. Based onethnographic research on their social-reproductive interactions in São Paulo (2020-2022), I assess a twofold hypothesis. Intersectional asymmetries impact the production of urban public space situationally depending on their management within the spatial boundaries of face-to-face interaction for social-reproductive purposes.