Abstract
Starting from the premise that the right to adequate housing is a basic principle established in international treaties as well as in the Brazilian Constitution, the aim of this essay is threefold: to trace the introduction of this principle in the international and national contexts; to follow its further elaboration in debates on adequate housing and to examine the translation of the term “adequate housing” into “dignified housing” in Brazilian Portuguese. National and international documents that are considered central to this debate were analyzed, taking as a starting point the United Nation’s 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. Methodologically, the analysis is based on discursive social psychology discussion of the characteristics of public domain documents. We conclude that the translation of adequate housing to dignified housing, in Brazil, is the result of placing the right to a house as an exercise in citizenship, with the use of the expression dignified housing serving to indicate that what is at stake is the dignity of life itself.
Keywords:
Housing as a Right; Adequate Housing; Dignity; Human Rights