Urbanization, Spatial Constraints and Democratic Challenge in Brazil

This article aims at analyzing one of the key features of the Brazilian democratic process on the basis of a literature review and fieldwork studies carried out in several cities during the last twenty years. It shows that today's Brazil core issue is to make sense of democratic ideals in a very unequal society in which geographical mobility is not enough anymore to get a better life. First, we will see what happened during the rapid urbanization and the building of a sociopolitical matrix, focusing on the connections between geographic mobility and social mobility, the way in which society tolerates sharp economic inequalities and the consequences of corporatism on the social imaginary. Second, we will focus on the emergence of a new sense of justice in an urbanized country, pointing out the weakening of paternalism, the building of new social claims and the fragile right to the city.