Indebted margins: eviction, illegalism, and the financialization of housing in Brazilian favelas
Funding period: 15 February 2026 – 15 July 2026
Type of funding:
International Fellowship
DOI: https://doi.org/10.69752/72CY-HK23
Award Number: USF-INT-251001
Gustavo Prieto is an urban geographer and Associate Professor at the Cities Institute of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp). He holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of São Paulo (USP), and has held visiting research positions at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the University of Minnesota. He currently coordinates the Critical Ethnographies Laboratory (LEC/Unifesp) and is affiliated with the Critical Urban Theory Group at the Institute of Advanced Studies (USP) and with the Evictions Observatory, part of LabCidade – Laboratory for Public Space and the Right to the City at FAUUSP.
His ethnographic research investigates the expansion and diversification of criminal economies, the privatisation of land regularisation, territorial illegalisms, and the private production and management of urban space in Brazilian favelas and peripheral territories. He examines how everyday urban life is shaped by indebtedness and spatial segregation produced by state, market, and criminal actors who establish shared regimes of power and urban sovereignty.
As a USF International Fellow, Dr Prieto will spend five months at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), under the mentorship of Dr Marie Kolling (Senior Researcher, DIIS). During the fellowship, he will publish findings from his ethnographic research, contributing to global debates on urban inequality, eviction, debt-fare urbanism, financialization, and contested forms of governance in the Global South.
Profile at Unifesp | Profile at Researchgate | Profile at Bluesky | gustavo.prieto@unifesp.br