TY - JOUR A1 - Nogueira, Priscilla T1 - “Battlers” and their homes: About self-production of residences made by the brazilian new middle class JF - Social Inclusion N2 - The article presents preliminary results and qualitative analysis obtained from the doctoral research provisory entitled “How do Brazilian ‘battlers’ reside?”, which is in progress at the Institute for European Urban Studies, Bauhaus Univer-sity Weimar. It critically discusses the contradictions of the production of residences in Brazil made by an emerging so-cial group, lately called the Brazilian new middle class. For the last ten years, a number of government policies have provoked a general improvement of the purchasing power of the poor. Between those who completely depend on the government to survive and the upper middle class, there is a wide (about 100 million people) and economically stable lower middle group, which has found its own ways of dealing with its demand for housing. The conventional models of planning, building and buying are not suitable for their technical, financial and personal needs. Therefore, they are con-currently planners, constructors and residents, building and renovating their own properties themselves, but still with very limited education and technical knowledge and restricted access to good building materials and constructive ele-ments, formal technicians, architects or engineers. On the one hand, the result is an informal and more or less autono-mous self-production, with all sorts of technical problems and very interesting and creative spatial solutions to every-day domestic situations. On the other hand, the repercussions for urban space are questionable: although basic infrastructure conditions have improved, building densities are high and green areas are few. Lower middle class neigh-bourhoods present a restricted collective everyday life. They look like storage spaces for manpower; people who live to work in order to be able to consume—and build—what they could not before. One question is, to what extent the lat-est economic rise of Brazil has really resulted in social development for lower middle income families in the private sphere regarding their residences, and in the collective sphere, regarding the neighbourhoods they inhabit and the ur-ban space in general. KW - Brasilien KW - Wohnsitz KW - Mittelstand KW - Brazil; collective; residences; families; neighbourhoods; new middle class; private; self-production; space; urban Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:gbv:wim2-20170425-31568 SP - 44 EP - 61 ER - TY - THES A1 - Nogueira, Priscilla T1 - Brazilian battlers' housing. Histories of self-production - histories of social rise N2 - Brazilian battlers’ housing discusses the self-production of dwellings in the circumstances of the socioeconomic rise of the so-called Brazilian new middle class, occurred on the first decade of the years 2000. Battlers are a precarious working class of about 100 million people, who have used their recently increased purchase power to informally solve their private housing demands, planning, building and renovating their homes themselves, with limited technical knowledge and almost no access to formal technicians as for example architects. The result is a mode of housing production, which spreads over the territory in micro-local self-initiatives and informal social practices of construction and management. With the support of a controversial manpower, this practice presents all sorts of technical complications, but at the same time expedient ways of affordability and creative spatial solutions for ordinary constructive problems. Such initiatives have consolidated Brazilian informal settlements and peripheral subdivisions, attending a demand poorly responded by the government. This research recognises the benefits of the self-production, but questions the conditions under which it happens and asks if it really collaborates for a true social rise of those who are engaged in it. With an empirical and qualitative approach and taking dwelling construction processes leaded by battlers as main information sources, the academic work responds if and how the socioeconomic rise of the Brazilian battlers has exactly affected the self-production of dwellings. For that, battlers’ self-production of dwellings is analysed and discussed in five main aspects: 1) acquisition of land and real state, 2) building overtime, 3) space and creative power, 4) technical complications and building materials and 5) manpower and know-how. KW - Brazil KW - self-production KW - low middle class KW - social housing KW - Sozialwohnung Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:gbv:wim2-20190506-38953 ER -