The Situational Impact of Intersectional Inequalities on Urban Public Space in Latin America: Lessons from Homeless Women in Covid-19 São Paulo

Abstract

How do intersectional inequalities daily impact on the physical-material and social dimensions of urban public space in Latin America? Ethnographic data on the here-and-now of bodily and materially mediated interactions of homeless women in public streets, squares, courts, and halls of the region’s largest city during the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2022) help me argue that intersectional inequalities interfere with the physical and social setting of urban public space situationally. After situating my thesis theoretically, I demonstrate it via a two-step methodology. Thus, four patterns of spatialized interaction related to the women’s social-reproductive practices in São Paulo disclose the interactional production of three situational spaces within public space in urban Latin America.