Necropolitics and the Covid-19 pandemic: evictions and removals that mark the recurrent housing problem in Brazil

Abstract

This work aims to reflect on the impacts of COVID-19, a disease responsible for the pandemic worldwide status in 2020, on urban housing policies in Brazil, which has faced structural problems since the turn of the century. These problems were accentuated and evidenced with the onset of the pandemic. The paper sought to highlight the dismantling scenario and the setbacks of human rights that are expressed in the manner in which the federal government behaves in the face of the collapse caused by the health crisis. In addition to highlighting that, the housing problem has been sewn with patches that are not effective to supply the gigantic demand for housing in the country currently, besides they do not guarantee the security of tenure to the majority of families in socioeconomic vulnerability. In this context, the focus of the discussion is on the removals and evictions that have occurred during the pandemic, putting at risk an entire population historically neglected by the neoliberal policies of capitalism. Moreover, these policies have been accentuated as a reflection of the recent democratic inflection in the country, which has strongly threatened human and social rights, legitimized by necropolitics, during the pandemic (Mbembe, 2018). The text is presented as a theoretical study carried through an exploratory methodological structure, based on a bibliographic review and documentary analysis of the subject matter. This article does not intend to bring conclusions or final answers, but to present new elements for the debate on the dismantling of Brazilian housing policies, evidenced in the current scenario through the lack of access to decent housing or difficulty in keeping it, mainly for the lowest-income populations.