The young people from the urban outskirts have been represented by the media through the imagery of apathy, incivility and delinquency. Preconceived ideasabout the territories in which these young people live negatively influence their future prospects and their relationship with the city, having the effect of segregating them, particularly in the case of people of African descent. Nevertheless, the growing importance of arts and cultural production of that youth is providing new visibility capable of subverting stereotypes and affirming positive identities about themselves and their territories. The power of these creative practices was noted by the state agencies, which started to mobilize them for the purpose of social inclusion in the context of promoting a new generation of more participatory public policies. In a scenario of economic crisis, social exclusion and lack of opportunities for youth emancipation, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative to understand how creativity is mobilized by young people from segregated territories, as well as what their influence is on the redefinition of urban policies targeting them. PERICREATIVITY is a project that aims to examine the creativity of young people in the segregated territories of the two largest Portuguese cities, Lisbon and Porto,in which their artistic expressions are as much a means of making sense to their lives and creating alternative professional paths as a resource for social inclusion.We propose a study of the creativity and arts of young people from underprivileged territories as two dynamic elements that feed each other and should be framedin a new episteme, influencing subjectivities and political strategies. The creative dynamics linked to the artistic expression of ‘peripheral’ young people are increasingly appropriate by public policies stimulating local development, citizen participation and social inclusion. This is the case of the ‘Programa Escolhas’(Choices Programme) and a set...

The core elements of this research feed into each other: the artistic-cultural productions of young people from the outskirts of Lisbon, their civic engagement and the public policies targeting them. Although peripheral youths continue to be problematized in the field of deviance and marginality, the growing importance of their artistic expressions has provided them with new visibility that is able to reposition it in the disputes by the contours of the society in which they live. The relationship between the artistic-cultural expressions and civic participation of peripheral youths is not ignored by the state. On the contrary, these populations have become the prime target of public and private investment in the handling of social problems for the purpose of “inclusion”. To analyze this process, I will conduct ethnographic fieldwork in three peripheral neighborhoods of Lisbon, where Programa Escolhas  and urban art projects take place. The current research project intends to assess the extent to which these public policies are capable of promoting the political and civic participation of young people to overcome segregation, stigmatization and violence with the aim of contributing in building more inclusive societies.

In the early 21st century, housing has returned to the centre of struggles and political debate in the Western world. In Southern Europe, housing crises, and intensifying dynamics of gentrification and touristification, have contributed to the emergence of new housing social movements around issues such as displacement, and social and economic exclusion. Strongly affected by these trends, Lisbon is in the midst of a perfect storm for housing, generated by the intersection of the long wave of economic crisis and austerity with recent touristification, gentrification and massive real estate investment. At the same time, demographic changes (e.g. ageing, migrations and mobility) are reshaping local urban identities, which are reflected in new forms of housing activism. Social movement, urban policy and demographic studies seem to have dealt with housing in a compartmentalised way. By focusing on the city of Lisbon, a casen paradigmatic of contradictory trends but still under-theorised, HOPES aims to intertwine these analytical fields. Moving from the micro and meso dimensions of housing activism, HOPES will enlarge its scope to macro aspects such as national housing policies and global trends. HOPES' main questions are: how, and to what extent, do new housing movements mirror wider housing policies and dynamics? Which are the reciprocal influences between movements, political actors and globalising trends? What are the possible scenarios and futures in terms of housing and urban trends? HOPES adopts an interdisciplinary perspective and a mixed methodology. First, HOPES will analyse and cross information on new housing activism (ethnography, protest events and frames analysis), policy (critical policy analysis) and dynamics (mapping and demographic analysis) in housing in Lisbon. This study will be enriched by an action research partnership with the housing association Habita, and by cooperation with the FCT funded project exPERts on rehousing policies in Lisbon metro. ...

The cooperation aims at expanding the institutional and scientific cooperation between Portugal and Brazil by stimulating the exchange of lecturers, researchers and students around expounding the problem and understanding of modes of political participation with an emphasis on forms of protest and institutionalized citizen participation in participatory budgeting processes in Portugal and Brazil.Specific objectives: 1) to identify tendencies and determinants of participation in protests and participatory budgeting processes; 2) to identify patterns of political engagement according to participant profiles (gender, age, race, socioeconomicand cultural factors); 3) to integrate the patterns of political interactions of the various forms into a general understanding of the national contexts and to changes in the models of citizen participation in occidental democracies.

The project aims to consolidate the international network of collaboration between both teams around partner anthropological research on methods of collective social participation in Portuguese and Brazilian cities. This initiative of Luso-Brazilian exchange binds to two doctoral programs: Urban Studies (FCSH-UNL and ISCTE-IUL) and Postgraduate Anthropology Program (PPGA / UFF). The aim is to analyze the diversity of forms and practices of urban participation and how they mobilize and renew cultural, organizational, economic, political labor resources. This survey also wish to draw attention to activities that display scenarios, visibility and dispute in urban public space, challenging for advanced training in scientific thinking, but also the dissemination of public debate about different realities with a potential for comparability and dissemination of good practices.

Este projeto tem como objetivo analisar as formas de participação e engajamento cívico dos jovens nos subúrbios de Lisboa, particularmente em espaços urbanos segregados socialmente. Recusando a imagem comum que associa o subúrbio a um espaço homogéneo e “sem cultura”, onde as pessoas viveriam estilos de vida semelhantes, propomos uma etnografia de três bairros diferentes, todos palcos de atuação do Programa Escolhas. Analisaremos o que de novo tem sido criado pelos jovens em termos culturais, artísticos e associativos, no contexto de um maior protagonismo da juventude no exercício (e reclamação) dos direitos de cidadania em Portugal. Num momento de agravamento da crise económica, os jovens dos subúrbios mobilizam-se, criando novos espaços e práticas coletivas, preferencialmente em torno da produção cultural. Pretende-se, ainda, analisar o impacto dessas práticas nas trajetórias de vida dos jovens. O enfoque no Programa Escolhas permitirá enquadrar novas formas de agregação juvenil por referências às políticas públicas.

This project aims to deconstruct a common image of ‘suburbia’ as a uniform space, where people live similar lives in similarplaces. In order to better understand the reality behind this stereotype we will inquiry into the hypothetical causal relationship between the intensity of urban sprawl and its negative effects in terms of ecological balance, social fragmentation and citizenship practices.