Necropolitical synergies: notes for understanding the urban segregation of the homeless population

Abstract

This study discusses the urban segregation the homeless population experienced based on qualitative and cartographic research that has been carried out with homeless people and observations of urban spaces in Porto Alegre/Rio Grande do Sul. The management of urban territories evinced the necropolitics in the daily lives of people due to its removals and forced displacements, inert structures of segregation, and strategies of expulsion and displacement. Necropolitics, articulated with racism, produces the death of subjects on the political, affective, social and biological levels. Gentrification and productivity constitute the narrative that endorses and naturalizes violence and attributes an inhuman character to subjects. The synergy between the State and society operates and naturalize these mechanisms, producing both violations and access to rights. It is urgent to combat the scrapping of public policies and denounce racism, reaffirming the guarantee of rights.