No Right to Share the City: Being Homeless in Rio de Janeiro during the FIFA World Cup

Abstract

To stage a successful mega-event, hosts believe they must present their city as safe and clean. Thus, policy-makers create and enforce spatial rules to hide the homeless from public view. Spatial conflicts peak when the homeless use public places selected for mega-event staging. We analyze these space conflicts from the perspective of the homeless before and during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. We propose a framework of clean streets policies that are regularly used based on a spectrum of high- to low-conflict zones. Furthermore, we contribute to current knowledge suggesting there are invisible spatial barriers in no-conflict zones that violently enable new codes of behaviors for and among the homeless.