Right to housing: the actions of the Removals Museum during the pandemic

Abstract:

The struggle for the right to housing in Brazil continued to exist during the Covid-19 pandemic and had to adopt new strategies in the face of health restrictions. This article addresses the demands of the Museum of Removals movement and its performance in defense of the right to housing. The research is based on qualitative data from the transcript of debates held in 2020 and 2021 by the Removals Museum with other social movements on the internet. The results reveal that the main challenges faced by social movements during the pandemic were the failure of the Brazilian State to ensure the right to housing with dignity in cities and the continuous violence in evictions and removals that occurred even in the face of health restrictions. The research shows that the dispute over territories in urban centers fundamentally serves the interests of real estate capitalism, capable of even making it impossible to comply with sanitary measures in public health in the midst of a pandemic with high lethality.

Keywords:  Right to housing; Museum of Removals; Territory; Gentrification