Feeling like a citizen: hope amid social exclusion in São Paulo during the Covid-19 pandemics

Abstract

This paper harnesses the strengths of the recent affective turn in citizenship studies. It makes three contributions to the literature. First, against proponents and critics of neoliberalism who neglect the reinventions of citizenship under ‘neoliberalism’, it emphasises the politics of hope advanced by socially excluded people. Second, while sympathetic to the affective turn in citizenship it addresses what it believes to be its key limitations: a neglect of the care people expect from the state and the feelings of solidarity that remain central to citizenship. Third, by reflecting on the experience of neighbourhood in Sao Paulo, the paper challenges the overwhelming focus of the affective citizenship literature on the Global North by drawing on perspectives from a key city in the Global South.