CREATING TERRITORIES IN RESISTANCE: URBAN PERIPHERIES, DIVERSE ECONOMIES AND THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC ROLE OF CHILD CARE CENTERS IN SANTA LUZIA, FEDERAL DISTRICT OF BRAZIL

This paper argues that informal child care centers in urban peripheries do not only occupy the vacuum left by the absence of public services, but they and the women who run them may also play a key role in the creation of what Raul Zibechi calls "territories in resistance". We illustrate this argument through a case study on informal child care centers located in the Setor de Chacaras Santa Luzia, a slum in the Federal District of Brazil. The analysis is mainly based on the concepts of "territories in resistance" (ZIBECHI, 2015), "diverse economies" (GIBSON-GRAHAM, 1998), the resonance of these concepts within current debates on the urban periphery as well as on ethnographic research. The results show that the child care workers in Santa Luzia contribute, through their socioeconomic projects, to the resistance against the attacks caused by capitalist expansion and to the viability of everyday life in the urban periphery. These projects are largely based on family and community logics centered on the figure of the "woman/mother". This paper seeks to contribute, firstly, to the debates about the creation and workings of "territories in resistance" and the involved gender relations, and secondly, to the debates about the social role of informal child care centers in urban peripheries.