Introduction

1The exercise of citizenship, in a strict sense, includes the possibility of the subject recognizing and being recognized as a citizen, being able to enjoy rights and actively participate in the political process of his/her country (DALLARI, 1998). In broader terms, according to Covre (1998, p. 9), « [...] being a citizen means having rights and duties, being a subject and being sovereign ». Evidently, such meanings ignore certain deeper aspects of the concept of citizenship, although they are sufficient for a minimum characterization of its most generic attributes.

2In this sense, Hannah Arendt’s (1989) reflections in The Origins of Totalitarianism offer us an excellent starting point for a more complex view of citizenship. According to Celso Lafer (1988), in Arendt’s sense, citizenship is not only a means of ensuring individual rights, but also, fundamentally, a substantive principle of the human condition itself. In Arendt’s conception, citizenship can be defined, in summary, by the expression « right to have rights » (ARENDT, 1989, p. 332), that is, it is a right from which all others derive; a basic prerequisite for an individual to belong to a community of equals and, in this way, have « [...] full access to the legal order that only citizenship offers » (LAFER, 1988, p. 166).

3In this direction, several documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) are concerned with ensuring minimum conditions of citizenship, so that basic rights, such as the right to life, can be guaranteed. In the same sense, the 1988 Brazilian Federal Constitution included, in its Article 1, the principle of citizenship as one of the pillars of the Brazilian Democratic State of Law, in addition to listing, in Title II, a significant set of fundamental rights and guarantees associated with the materialization of this institution.

4It is known, on the other hand, that the mere institutionalization of rights, no matter how legitimate and fundamental they may be, is not a solid guarantee that they will be duly enforced. As Norberto Bobbio (2004, p. 32) points out, « one thing is to talk about human rights, rights that are always new and increasingly extensive, and to justify them with convincing arguments; and another thing is to guarantee them effective protection ». At this point, it is necessary to consider that there is a categorical difference between « legal effectiveness » and « social effectiveness ». While legal effectiveness is related to (formal) suitability, that is, the legal norm being applied to specific cases, social effectiveness encompasses both compliance with the due process of jurisdiction for applying the norm, as well as the concrete result and the factual repercussions arising from this application (SARLET, 2012). Therefore, in terms of social reality, it is not enough for norms to be formally valid or legally in force; they must also be socially recognized, that is, incorporated into the collective way of being and acting (REALE, 2001).

5This process, in turn, brings together not only a legal-normative dimension, but, substantially, a political-geographical dimension, because, as Milton Santos (2007, p. 81) points out, « it is in the territory as it currently is that citizenship takes place as it is today, that is, incomplete ». Thus, if we want to create a new type of committed citizenship as a new civic model of fair distribution of essential goods and services, the organization and management of space must be considered as indispensable components to achieve this end. According to Santos (2007, p. 81), the full realization of man, material and immaterial, depends on the conjunction of economic and cultural processes: « both have to do with the territory and this does not only have a passive role, but constitutes an active fact, and must be considered as a factor and not exclusively as a reflection of society ».

6Based on exploratory research, this paper proposes a critical reflection on the concept of citizenship, not only from a legal-normative point of view — as it is conventionally addressed in the main law manuals — but in its inseparable articulation with geography. According to Gil (2008), exploratory research has the main purpose of providing a greater understanding of the topic under analysis, exploring in an unstructured way, concepts, ideas, perspectives and heated discussion within a given field of study. For this work, it involved a bibliographic survey of works, articles and other materials that could support the discussion with concepts and approaches relevant to a critical analysis of citizenship and its articulation with territorial dynamics.

7Therefore, this journey begins with a brief overview that seeks to locate the ways in which citizenship was understood in different periods of western history, analyzing the changes, continuities and contradictions that have been established over time. After that, the relationship between citizenship and territory is discussed, invoking the territorial component as a materializing content of the exercise of citizenship itself. Finally, the aim is to link the concept of citizenship to the notion of territorial resistance, starting above all from a critical view of the constituent power of human rights. With this, the conclusion is attesting to the importance of insurgency movements and territorial dynamics in the process of realizing citizens’ rights and human emancipation.

Between the polis and the civitas: a brief analysis of citizenship and its historical constitution

8The etymological root of the word « citizen » comes from the Latin word « civitas » (city), demonstrating, from the lexicon, the inherent relationship between the two. In fact, from this perspective, the « citizen », lato sensu, can be defined as someone who lives in the city. Although this concept is not entirely wrong, since, as Covre (1998, p. 18) observes, « the origin of citizenship [...] is related to the emergence of life in the city »; even in antiquity, whether in the greek pólis or in the roman civitas, the expression consigned much more than mere housing, since not all those who actually lived in the city or who were there for reasons beyond their control could hold the title of « citizen ». In this regard, Aristotle (1998, p. 185) had already demonstrated in Book III of Politics: « [...] no individual is a citizen simply because he lives in a certain place, for, just like citizens, metics and slaves also have a place to live ». Being a citizen, therefore, already at that time expressed a political meaning that sought to establish certain distinctive criteria. Not everyone was a citizen and, as such, not everyone could enjoy the prerogatives associated with this condition. Despite this, in Rome, unlike what occurred in Greece, with the overwhelming growth of the empire and the conquest of new cities, citizenship began to assume a more abstract and autonomous dimension, expanding its scope and scale of influence beyond the borders of the urbis itself (OLIVEIRA, 1999). Thus, even someone who was not a Roman citizen from birth could later acquire Roman citizenship. An emblematic case is that of the poet Licinius Archias, who, having been born in Antioch, managed to acquire Roman citizenship. Later, this citizenship would be contested in one of the most famous lawsuits in history, immortalized by Cicero’s defense in the speech Pro Archia Poeta (CÍCERO, 1986).

9The Greeks, less permissive than the Romans, only considered citizens those born in the pólis, because the pólis represented a unity of people of the same génos. As Cacciari (2010, p. 12) explains, in Greek civilization, the principle of « I belong to that pólis because that is where the same génos is based » prevailed. Thus, Greek citizenship included an ontological and genealogical specificity that was not present in Roman citizenship. Furthermore, while in Greece citizenship was expressed rigidly in the citizen/non-citizen binomial, in Rome it was divided into more than one type, types of gradation of citizenship that guaranteed more or less rights according to each category of citizen (FUNARI, 2006; OLIVEIRA, 1999). Thus, Roman citizenship, although equally restrictive and selective as Greek citizenship, « [...] became differentiated and more complex [...] assuming distinct levels among social classes and incorporating a symbolic value that [extended] its geographic dimension beyond the territory of the reference city [...] » (OLIVEIRA, 1999, p. 98).

10Therefore, according to Comparato (1993, p. 24), « with the decline and disappearance of Greco-Roman civilization, the western world went through several centuries of suppression of citizenship ». During the middle ages, the preponderance of the church and the feudal mode of organization led to a kind of privatization of power, weakening the state’s dominance and, consequently, fragmenting political relations. Thus, as Bobbio (2000, p. 71) explains, feudal society became a society made up of several oligarchic centers of power; pluralistic, but not democratic, which explains, on the other hand, the unequal and hierarchical structure on which the political, social and economic order of that period was based. According to Marshall (1967, p. 64):

In feudal society, status was the distinctive mark of class and the measure of inequality. There was no uniform code of rights and duties with which all men – nobles and commoners, free and serfs – were invested by virtue of their participation in society. There was, in this sense, no principle of equality of citizens to contrast with the principle of class inequality.

11Only in the modern age, with the end of feudalism and the emergence of nation states, would citizenship gradually recover the political nexus originating in antiquity under the new foundation of sovereign power:

In the nation-state, each citizen finds himself in a direct relationship with the sovereign authority of the country, in contrast to the medieval state, in which this direct relationship is enjoyed only by the great men of the kingdom. Consequently, an essential element of nation-building is the codification of the rights and duties of all adults who are classified as citizens (BENDIX, 1996, p. 109).

12Of course, this process did not happen instantly. The transition from the feudal age to the era of nation states did not immediately change the division of the feudal estates, so the regime of privileges and social distinction remained. It was only around the 17th century, in England, France and the North American colonies, that the revolutionary ideas arising from the Enlightenment would penetrate this structure deeply, extinguishing the Ancien Régime and establishing a new political order, founded, at least in theory, on the mantle of equality and universality of rights. These movements, inspired mainly by natural law and liberal premises, also resulted in the promulgation of two fundamental documents in the historical process of affirming human rights: the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) and the United States Bill of Rights (1789).

14From then on, national constitutions would also emerge, not only in France and the United States, but in several other countries, influenced by the French and American revolutions. The constitutional charters, in turn, paved the way for the creation of the rule of law, of the supremacy of the law over all acts of public life. In this transformation, citizenship was directly associated with the ideas of political participation and popular sovereignty, of the individual’s belonging to the nation-state and of the defense of individual freedoms:

The rule of law stands as the opposite of the state of birth, the despotic state, which until then existed under the rule of the aristocracy. In the latter, the fate of men could be decided arbitrarily; there was no way to oppose death or other impositions. This was also the case, in a different but tyrannical way, in the Middle Ages. In feudal society, serfs and peasants were treated like cattle, aggregated to the land; they had no choice over their destinies or free will over their values. If, under the monarchical state, peasants and workers already enjoyed a certain freedom of movement and some control over their lives, they were nevertheless subject to the wishes of the monarch and had no way of defending their personal security. All this changed with the emergence of the liberal bourgeois state, when the bourgeoisie established the rule of law (COVRE, 1998, p. 23-24).

15On the contrary, as Covre (1998) points out, the bourgeois and liberal conception of citizenship did not fail to bring with it inescapable contradictions, perpetuating, even in the European context and despite the discourse of abstract and universal equality, material and class inequalities. With the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the factory workers, the exploitation that had previously been practiced through servitude took the form of wage labor. Thus, while the proletariat was forced to sell its labor force, traded as a commodity and therefore subject to the law of supply and demand, immense fortunes began to accumulate in the hands of the bourgeoisie, which owned the means of production. In effect, « [...] exploitation, carried out through capitalist relations of production, [was] hidden under a double appearance: that of the equality of the parties and that of the free will with which they may or may not enter into the contractual relationship » (ANDRADE, 1993, p. 59).

[For Marx] citizenship was a concept that the bourgeoisie brought from antiquity and from the practice of medieval cities, denaturalizing it and making it functional for the necessary seizure of power by this emerging class. The citizen of Marx’s time was the bourgeois property owner, subject to all political rights and who presented himself as the depositary of the general will. Since representatives were elected by citizens, they now presented themselves as legitimized by society. The concept of citizen was yet another weapon to distort reality; it was also, and consequently, another of the objects to which Marxist criticism pointed. [...] Marx, by criticizing domination within the capitalist mode of production, criticized all of its theoretical and ideological constructions, including citizenship.

17Later, these criticisms would be nuanced by reformist socialists and also by progressive liberal thought itself, giving rise to the genesis of the welfare state, in which the negative role of the state in protecting individual freedoms would be added to the positive function of promoting social and economic rights, such as the right to housing, work, health, education, etc. At this point, it is important to mention the classic succession of T. H. Marshall (1967) regarding the constitutive rights of citizenship: civil rights, political rights, and social rights. According to Marshall (1967), each of these sets also corresponds to a specific historical period in which such freedoms developed. In the 18th century, civil rights emerged in order to guarantee individual freedom, freedom of expression, contract, property, etc. This is also where other freedoms arose, such as freedom to work and the inviolability of the home, all of which are related to the protection of private life in the face of unjustified or arbitrary external interference. In the 19th century, the right to political participation was added, giving rise to the second generation of citizens’ rights, which sought to ensure the right to vote and association, as well as the right to be elected. Finally, in the 20th century, social rights emerged, in order to enable, through more effective action by the state, adequate conditions for a dignified life.

18For Marshall (1967, p. 76), these rights are pertinent to the status of citizenship, so that « all those who possess the status are equal with respect to the rights and obligations pertinent to the status ». In this way, Marshall (1967) proposes that social disparities can only be addressed through an equalization of this legal-political status, with this equality of status, in his view, being more important than equality of income. Thus, although Marshall shifts the discussion of citizenship to the prism of social inequalities, his propositions remain reduced to narrow notions of institutionalization of rights and linear evolution of history, ignoring the setbacks and disruptions interposed throughout the process of affirmation/creation of these rights, as well as the ideological aspects that involve the social dynamics on which they are based (COELHO, 1990; GIDDENS, 1982; SAES, 2003).

19According to Bello (2011), the modern concept of citizenship, based on a strictly legal meaning (as a status of rights), has only served to produce a process of alienation of citizenship and a constitutional fetishism: firstly, citizenship was transferred from the concrete political individual to the abstract figure of the « citizen » projected onto state institutions; secondly, citizenship ceased to be practiced socially and began to be applied judicially through legal norms. As a result, state institutionality was prioritized to the detriment of the active participation of citizens (subordinated to a passive position), in addition to creating the illusion that the full realization of citizenship would only be possible by entrusting it to the law (especially the constitution) and to the actors of the judicial system (BELLO, 2011).

20In this line of reasoning, overcoming a limiting view of citizenship must predispose the active participation of civil society, since only collective action can set in motion the revolutionary process of human emancipation. As Bello (2011, p. 21) advocates, a new meaning for the concept of citizenship must be conceived from the theoretical-practical perspective of dialectics and « disalienation », that is, « [...] through the reunion between man and politics, theory and practice, legal norms and social praxis [...], in order to recognize the spaces and actors that effectively and legitimately produce and practice citizenship, beyond the state-institutional structure [...] ». Thus, « achieving citizenship is not about possessing a status, as Marshall says, but rather advancing in the state of social consciousness that is the core of the collective » (COELHO, 1990, p. 24).

21To this end, the new citizenship must be perceived beyond the static and abstract nature of a current legal order, as well as from other political and epistemological assumptions that challenge the dominant liberal/eurocentric vision. It is necessary to (re)think of citizenship as an emancipatory exercise, that is, as a praxis of social liberation. That is why, as Roberto Lyra Filho (2006) asserts, human rights cannot be seen merely as a set of static norms, but as rights that are acquired in social struggles and throughout history until they are concretized as an « advanced model of legitimate social organization of freedom ». In the words of the author:

Justice is social justice, above all: it is the updating of guiding principles, emerging in social struggles, to lead to the creation of a society in which the exploitation and oppression of man by man ceases; and law is no more, nor less, than the expression of those supreme principles, as an advanced model of legitimate social organization of freedom. But even injustice, as well as anti-law (that is, the establishment of illegitimate norms and their imposition in poorly organized societies) are part of the process, because neither a just society, nor justice correctly seen, nor law itself, the legitimate kind, are born from a metaphysical cradle or are a generous gift from the gods: they spring forth in oppositions, in conflict, in the arduous path of progress, with advances and retreats, solar moments and terrible eclipses. Law is a process, within the historical process: it is not something done, perfect and finished; it is that becoming that enriched in the liberation movements of the ascending classes and groups and that withers in the exploitations and oppressions that contradict it, but from whose very contradictions will spring new conquests (LYRA FILHO, 2006, p. 56).

22This dialectical and emancipatory exercise, in turn, is directly associated with a territorial component that cannot be ignored, since it is in the lived territory that social relations materialize, giving shape and meaning to life in its concreteness (SANTOS, 2007; CÔRTES; ARAÚJO, 2022). Territoriality not only defines physical spaces, it establishes spaces of identity, belonging, and resistance, where different social groups articulate and fight for their rights, resources, and ways of life. Thus, as Côrtes and Araújo (2022) point out, it becomes imperative to abandon the essentialist and abstract view of space and law, prioritizing an approach centered on the concreteness of conflicting social relations of spatial and normative production, rooted in social struggles. The territory is the point of tension where these factors come together and, therefore, the starting point for any concrete analysis of citizenship; because the exercise of citizenship is shaped by the territorial context, and this territorial context, in turn, results from complex and dynamic interactions between political, economic, cultural and social structures.

The territory of the citizen and the territorialization of citizenship

23To understand citizenship from an approach that considers the territorial component, it is first necessary to arrive at an appropriate definition of « territory ». In the field of geographical sciences, the term gained important prominence from the work of Friedrich Ratzel (1990), particularly in texts such as Anthropogeography and The Laws of Spatial Growth of States, published at the end of the 19th century. In his work, Ratzel (1990) defines territory as the political and moral expression of the nation-state, emphasizing the intrinsic relationship between geographic space and the formation and action of political entities. For him, as explained by Machado (1997, p. 4-5), « the power and action of the national state defined territoriality [...], the territoriality of space, which was given [...] through the fixation of capital and labor materialized in the soil, which in turn marked the political-territorial limits ».

24From the 1970s onwards, with the phenomenon of « globalization » and the accentuation of global forces acting on local systems, the concepts of territory and territoriality began to take on a new focus. It was within this context of conceptual renewal that Claude Raffestin’s work Pour une géographie du pouvoir (1980) emerged. In this seminal work, Raffestin (1993) shifts the issue of territory from discussions around the power of the state to those around the multiple power relations that come together within society, thus giving rise to new territorial configurations. In his view, « territory is formed from space, it is the result of an action led by a syntagmatic actor (actor who carries out a program) at any level » (RAFFESTIN, 1993, p. 143). In this new scope, the power that shapes the territory is no longer, as in the classical current, one-dimensional and exercised exclusively by the state; « to varying degrees, at different times and in different places, we are all syntagmatic actors that produce ‘territories’ » (RAFFESTIN, 1993, p. 147).

25From this perspective, power is not only exercised from top to bottom, in a centralized and verticalized manner, but is also produced and reproduced through social interactions that occur within and from territories, as a set of multilateral power relations. Thus, within this conception, as Haesbaert (2006, p. 93) explains, « we can affirm that the territory, relationally speaking, as a spatial mediation of power, results from the differentiated interaction between the multiple dimensions of this power [...] ».

26From this, according to Raffestin (1993, p. 158), « territoriality acquires a very particular value, as it reflects the multidimensionality of the territorial ‘experience’ of the members of a collective [...] » and corresponds, in these terms, to the actions established by the subjects within the territory. In this regard, it is worth emphasizing that these relationships encompass not only the production process, but also invoke an ontological dimension that modifies the subjects themselves:

[...] the territory must be seen from the perspective not only of a politically structured domain or control, but also of an appropriation that incorporates a symbolic, identity-based dimension and, why not say, depending on the group or social class to which we are referring, an affective one. [...] The territory always involves, at the same time but in different degrees of correspondence and intensity, a symbolic, cultural dimension, through a territorial identity attributed by social groups, as a form of « symbolic control » over the space where they live (and therefore also a form of appropriation), and a more concrete dimension, of a political-disciplinary nature: the appropriation and ordering of space as a form of domination and disciplinarization of individuals (HAESBAERT, 1997, p. 41).

27This results in a complex geography, what Haesbaert (2002) calls « multiterritoriality », referring to the diversity of territories that overlap, articulate and interconnect at different levels of action. Thus, instead of a world characterized by the total loss of fixed territories and the creation of a new absence of territoriality, Haesbaert (2006) points out that we are living in a time of territorial explosion, where different forms of territorial organization coexist. This coexistence of « multiple territorialities » always implies disputes, not only by the different agents that act in their (re)production, but also by the capillarity of the power networks that are constituted territorially, which is why « the territory, as a dominated and/or appropriated space [...] can only be properly apprehended within a conception of multiplicity, of a multiterritoriality » (HAESBAERT, 2004, p. 19). As Zambrano (2001, p. 31, our translation) states, « territory is conquered, [...] it is a social struggle converted into space », therefore, in Haesbaert’s (2002, p. 121) synthesis, « [...] the product of an unequal relationship of forces, involving the political-economic dominance or control of space and its symbolic appropriation, sometimes combined and mutually reinforced, sometimes disconnected and contradictorily articulated ».

28In this way, more than a physical and material entity, territory must be interpreted in terms of its relations, inserted in a context of social interactions (economic, political, cultural and socio-environmental) that constantly transform it and are transformed by it, in a continuous and dialectical movement between territorialization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization (HAESBAERT, 2023). Therefore, as Haesbaert (2023, p. 3) emphasizes, « [...] it is essential to understand the territory from the multiple social subjects involved in the dynamics of de-re-territorialization, especially considering the distinctions and overlaps between hegemonic classes or groups and subalternized classes or groups ». This means that territorial analysis must take into account not only « spatial objects », but also the complex networks of social relations and processes that shape and are shaped by the territory. Therefore, returning to an important Milton Santos concept, instead of being simply an absolute space or a « system of isolated objects », the territory must also be conceived as a « system of actions » interconnected and defined by its use (SANTOS, 2006). In the words of the author:

The territory is not only the set of natural systems and systems of overlapping things. The territory must be understood as used territory, not just the ground itself. The used territory is the ground plus the identity. Identity is the feeling of belonging to that which belongs to us. Territory is the foundation of work, the place of residence, of material and spiritual exchanges and of the exercise of life. Territory in itself is not a category of analysis in historical disciplines, such as Geography. It is used territory that is a category of analysis (SANTOS, 2011, p. 14, author’s emphasis).

29Thus, if, as Santos (1998, p. 15) points out, « it is the use of the territory, and not the territory itself, that makes it the object of social analysis », there are at least two questions that arise in the reflection proposed here: i) how do the different ways of using the territory reflect and reproduce social relations?; ii) in what way is the exercise of citizenship manifested through the use of the territory?

30To answer these two questions, it is first necessary to consider that territorial practices are not neutral; they express and reinforce structures of power, inequalities and class relations. In this sense, the previously mentioned distinction between « domination » and « appropriation », proposed by Henri Lefebvre (2001), helps us to understand that the production of space, especially urban space, involves the interaction between the way it is planned and controlled by hegemonic agents (domination) and the way it is experienced and given meaning by its true users (appropriation). To appropriate is, in the wake of Lefebvrian thought, to endow space with « use value », that is, with a meaning that contemplates the needs and desires of those who live and (re) produce their daily lives; space as a work, not as a product; space as a place, not as a thing; in short, space to be collectively appropriated by the heterogeneous masses and not exclusively dominated by market forces.

31In this way, citizenship as a territorial exercise denotes the possibility of creating, from space and movements of appropriation, of re-territorialization — if we wish to define it that way — the necessary conditions that allow us to assume power over our (re)production as social groups/classes and as autonomous individuals. To this end, as Milton Santos (1998, p. 18) endorses, it is necessary to reflect « on the conflict between the act of producing and living, a function of the direct process of production, and the forms of regulation linked to other instances of production ». These « other instances » to which Santos (1998) refers are the networks formed by the global forces of the market that increasingly discipline, command and standardize territories:

There is a conflict that is worsening between a local space, a space lived by all neighbors, and a global space, inhabited by a rationalizing process and an ideological content of distant origin that arrives in each place with the objects and standards established to serve them. Hence the interest in resuming the notion of banal space, that is, the territory of everyone, often contained within the limits of everyone’s work; and in contrasting this notion with the notion of networks, that is, the territory of those forms and standards at the service of some. Thus, the entire territory and some of its parts, or points, that is, the networks, are contrasted. However, it is the World that produces, commands, disciplines, regulates, and imposes a rationality on the networks. This world is that of the universal market and world governments. [...] When we talk about the World, we are talking, above all, about the market, which today, unlike yesterday, permeates everything, including people’s consciousness. The market of things, including nature; the market of ideas, including science and information; the political market. Precisely, the political version of this perverse globalization is market democracy. [...] For this very reason, the great contradictions of our time involve the use of territory (SANTOS, 1998, p. 18-19).

32In « market democracy », as Santos (1998) reveals, the territory functions as a support for networks that transport utilitarian, partial and partialized rules and norms to « verticalities »; while « horizontality », the domains of contiguity, local coexistence, and heterogeneity, are weakened, subjected to a homogenizing process of control by external forces over lived reality. As Bauman (1999) explains, this process of homogenization gives rise to a contradictory movement of fragmentation of space itself. This is because, for him, « globalization divides as much as it unites; it divides while it unites — and the causes of division are identical to those that promote the uniformity of the globe » (BAUMAN, 1999, p. 7). Thus, according to Bauman (1999, p. 7), « along with the planetary dimensions of business, finance, trade and the flow of information, a ‘localizing’ process of fixation in space is set in motion ». In other words, if for some globalization is a sign of freedom and shortening of distances, for others it is a sign of confinement, of territorial exclusion:

In other words: instead of homogenizing the human condition, the technological annulment of temporal/spatial distances [globalization] tends to polarize it. It emancipates certain human beings from territorial restrictions and makes certain meanings that generate community extraterritorial — while at the same time stripping the territory, in which other people continue to be confined, of its meaning and its capacity to give identity. For some people, it augurs an unprecedented freedom in the face of physical obstacles and an unheard-of capacity to move and act at a distance. For others, it portends the impossibility of domesticating and appropriating the locality from which they have little chance of freeing themselves to move elsewhere (BAUMAN, 1999, p. 25).

33It is within this scenario that territories are configured today as an arena of tension between the global and the local, between the market and civil society, between the center and the periphery, between the state and social movements; between the vertical forms that impose capital domination and the horizontal forms that, even if weakened, unite social actors in a continuous (and contiguous) movement of (re)appropriation of this disputed space. As Milton Santos (1998, p. 19-20) explains:

The current trend is for places to unite vertically and everything is done to achieve this, everywhere. International credits are made available to the poorest countries to allow networks to be established for the service of big capital. However, places can also unite horizontally, rebuilding that basis of common life capable of creating local norms, regional norms... [...] We must bear this in mind when thinking about the construction of new horizontalities that will allow, from the base of territorial society, to find a path that will free us from the curse of the perverse globalization that we are experiencing and bring us closer to the possibility of building another globalization, capable of restoring man to his dignity.

34In this context, as Oliveira (2012, p. 198) argues, « the territory [...] imposes itself as a condition that contains the political content of citizenship and at the level of the social, cultural and economic organization that exists in each space-time, not only on a national scale, but also and necessarily on a local scale ». Without this territorial base, without this base where the materiality of life is (re)produced and where needs are felt and satisfied, the content of citizenship would be emptied, since « [...] the interests of the most impoverished sectors are realized in the neighborhood, in the favela, in the community » (FLEURY, 2004, p. 24), in short, in the territory itself. Thus, ultimately, « the phenomena related to socio-territorial disputes that occur in today’s world gain new relevance, putting into play the space that is a condition of the environment and exercise of this citizenship » (GOMES, 2006, p. 141). Milton Santos (2007, p. 144) also corroborates this:

It is impossible to imagine a concrete citizenship that does not require a territorial component. [...] The value of an individual depends on the place where he or she is and [...] the equality of citizens presupposes, for all, similar accessibility to goods and services, without which life will not be lived with the minimum dignity that is required. In other words, this means a territorial arrangement of these goods and services in which, according to their hierarchy, the places are support points, taking into account the demographic and economic density of the area and its fluidity.

35In such a case, for Santos (2007), it is necessary to think of a model of citizenship that considers at least two types of franchises to be open to all individuals: « territorial rights » and « cultural rights », among which the « right to the surroundings » itself is included. For him, since the territory is defined as a set of places and the state as a set of locations, the territorial distribution of public spending (which includes, among others, spending on culture, education, health, housing, transportation, leisure, etc.) must be established according to flexible rules, according to the needs of each territorial sphere. In his opinion, for these services to constitute a right intrinsic to the exercise of citizenship itself, constitutional regulation must be imposed:

The constitution must establish the conditions for each person to become a full and complete citizen, regardless of where they are. To this end, it must establish standards so that public goods cease to be the exclusive preserve of the best located. The territory, through its organization and instrumentation, must be used as a way to achieve an egalitarian social project. Civil society is also a territory, and cannot be defined outside of it. In order to overcome the vagueness of the concept and advance from abstract citizenship to concrete citizenship, the territorial issue cannot be ignored. There are social inequalities that are, first and foremost, territorial inequalities, because they derive from the place where each person is located. Their treatment cannot be alien to territorial realities. A citizen is the individual in a place. A republic will only be truly democratic when it considers all citizens as equal, regardless of where they are (SANTOS, 2007, p. 151).

36On the other hand, as he makes a point of warning, « the fight for citizenship does not end with the creation of a law or the constitution, because the law is just a concreteness, a finite moment of a philosophical debate that is always unfinished » (SANTOS, 2007, p. 105). Thus, « just as the individual must be watching himself so as not to be alienated by the surrounding alienation, so the citizen, based on the achievements obtained, must remain alert to guarantee and expand his citizenship » (SANTOS, 2007, p. 105). In this sense, as Covre (1986, p. 186) understands, « the fight for the satisfaction of goods (which must increasingly be about the socialization of material goods) must be accompanied by the socialization of politics [...] », that is, the effective appropriation of political power by disadvantaged groups and classes, in order to create a truly participatory democracy committed to the real demands and needs of the community.

37However, the predominance of a dominant scenario of poverty and widespread denial of rights, in addition to the recurring lack of cohesion and unification of social movements, make the population’s relationship with the very notion of real citizenship very tenuous (JACOBI, 1986b). For Harvey (2014, p. 65), although it is common knowledge that many urban social movements and struggles, in the broadest sense, including rural ones, are underway, « [...] they still need to focus on the sole objective of acquiring greater control over the uses of surplus (not to mention the conditions in which its production takes place) ». In Harvey’s (2014) view, one of the steps towards unifying these struggles would be to focus on moments of creative destruction, in which the « economy of wealth accumulation » violently transforms into an « economy of plunder ». In these moments, the oppressed must demand, on behalf of the dispossessed, the « right to the city » — the right to change the world, transform their lives and reinvent the city according to their deepest desires (HARVEY, 2014). For this very reason, especially in view of the reality of large Brazilian cities and metropolises, where inequalities and deficiencies are accentuated and reinforced and where contradictions are exacerbated, the struggle of the dispossessed for citizenship increasingly needs to be linked to processes of political-territorial resistance. Only in this way will we be able, in fact, as Jacobi (1986b) emphasizes, to build new spaces of citizenship, capable of nurturing a new emancipatory citizen consciousness and driving structural changes in the dominant political system.

Citizenship, territory and resistance

38According to Oliveira Filho and Menezes (2019), the notion of resistance applied to human rights incorporates at least two meanings. The first, within the liberal paradigm, is associated with the use of institutional channels to realize individual rights. The second, in turn, within a more critical bias, links « resistance » to the exercise of constituent power coming from organizations and social movements. Regarding this last approach, the authors explain that « more than the empowerment of communities, the new ‘resistance’ seeks to reverse the very notion of power within the scope of human rights theory » (OLIVEIRA FILHO; MENEZES, 2019, p. 3), thus contributing to the strengthening of local emancipatory practices and the empowerment of collective actors in the promotion of citizenship:

Contrary to what the deliberative school of thought assumes, human rights are not restricted to the monotonous relationship (mediated by law) between citizens and the state. If today, binomial civil society and state institutions set limits on human rights, in the past it was different. A brief analysis of the revolutions that marked the history of human rights is enough to understand the central role of the excluded multitude in the creation of alternative societal models. [...] The common narratives of human rights and democracy hide the spontaneous action of the multitude throughout history in order to promote the centrality of the state. In this sense, recovering the silenced past and the rebellious side of human rights is vital; it allows us to unveil the multiplicity of human rights practices and resist their transformation into ideology. Furthermore, these experiences bring together common principles and values to form an alternative pattern of resistance that reconciles human rights with structural changes and social justice (OLIVEIRA FILHO; MENEZES, 2019, p. 8-9).

39Based on the political theory of Illan Rua Wall and Toni Negri, Oliveira Filho and Menezes (2016) argue that the exercise of creating rights is in fact the exercise of a constituent power, in which people overcome the passive role imposed by the state-centered discourse and lead the construction of a community life, guided by processes of self-organization and collective action that challenge and redefine the established power structures, promoting a form of citizenship that transcends mere adherence to state norms and manifests itself in the daily practice of rights. This perspective is in line with the Miltonic formulation of citizenship, according to which « being a citizen [...] is being like the state, being an individual endowed with rights that allow him not only to face the state, but to confront the state » (SANTOS, 1996/1997, p. 133).

40It turns out that in a context such as Brazil, where the masses are made up of « mutilated citizenships, » the potential for these alternative movements to succeed is limited to the masses’ own awareness, which is made even worse by the fact that our middle class, as Santos (1996/1997) attests, is not concerned with rights, but with privileges. And that is why, Santos (1996/1997, p. 134) continues, there are almost no citizens in Brazil: « there are those who do not want to be citizens, who are the middle classes, and there are those who cannot be citizens, who are everyone else, starting with the black people [...] ».

41As an example, Santos (1996/1997) describes a long list of « mutilated citizenships, » highlighting, among them: citizenships mutilated at work, through denied opportunities; citizenships mutilated in remuneration and promotion opportunities; citizenships mutilated in terms of location, lack of access to housing and mobility; citizenships mutilated in terms of education and even citizenships mutilated in terms of differential treatment by the police and the justice system. Furthermore, according to Santos (1996/1997, p. 135-136), the central point of this situation of inequalities is closely linked to the historical process of slavery and its impact on the constitution of our civic model:

The Brazilian civic model is inherited from slavery, both the cultural civic model and the political civic model. Slavery marked the territory, marked the spirits and still marks the social relations of this country today. But it is also a civic model subordinated to the economy, one of the misfortunes of this country. Countries in which the civic model runs hand in hand with the economy and in many manifestations of collective life is placed above it. In Brazil, the economy decides what of the civic model can be installed. The civic model is residual in relation to the economic model and worsened during the years of the authoritarian regime and is dangerously worsening in this so-called Brazilian democracy. Territorialization itself is corporate, metropolitanization is corporate, national resources are used mainly in the service of corporations, the remainder being used for the rest of society. Economic calculations do not show how cities are organized to be used by some companies, by some people. Corporations are the ones that use most of the public resources, and this is one of the reasons why other layers of society do not have access to the essential conditions of life, to the so-called social services. In the case of black people, this is what happens.

42Incidentally, in the view of Jésse Souza (2003), within the specificity of the capitalist modernization process undertaken in Brazil, there was a reproduction of social inequalities and the creation of a structure of « sub-citizenship », in which certain groups were marginalized and excluded from the category of « citizens ». This is how Souza (2003) identifies « sub-citizenship » as a kind of structural « rabble » naturalized by the characteristic reproduction of Brazilian peripheral inequality, pointing out that the historical abandonment of black people and « free » men belonging to the « rabble » was the fundamental cause of their lack of adaptation to modern productive and social life, condemning these groups to a precarious life devoid of rights, both from a material and spiritual point of view, as well as from a sociopolitical point of view (SOUZA, 2003). In this way, the « rabble » would reproduce itself in its own abandonment, as it could not integrate into the dominant structure, since it bears a « precarious habitus » of inability to adapt to Brazilian modernization, a selective and exogenous modernization, which did not incorporate these groups effectively (SOUZA, 2003). As the author explains:

The modernity of countries like Brazil is « deficient », selective and peripheral because there has never been a directed and reflected social and political effort to effectively equalize the social conditions of the lower classes. The inclusion of the lower classes in Brazil has always been perceived – even by the best like Florestan Fernandes – as something that the expanding market would end up including as if by magic. The welfare efforts of yesterday and today, which are fundamental (it is better that they exist than not), but insufficient, never reach the main point because they are initiatives condemned to the short term (SOUZA, 2009, p. 401).

43In such a case, overcoming this structure requires much more than the institutionalization of formal rights or the implementation of programs that attack the symptom but do not solve the problem. Not that these measures are not important; they are undoubtedly necessary steps to mitigate the immediate effects of inequality and provide some relief to the disadvantaged classes. However, to truly overcome the structure of « sub-citizenship » and promote a deeper social transformation, it is necessary to go further. To go beyond the « ornamental speeches » in defense of human rights, formal equality of rights or any other precept that may be included in international declarations, regulations and pacts. This is why it is said, as José Geraldo de Sousa Junior (2011) argues in the wake of the « O Direito Achado na Rua » movement, that human rights are not to be confused with the declarations that proclaim them, nor with the philosophical ideas that support them, and much less with the values to which they refer or even with the institutions that represent them; « human rights are the concrete social struggles of the experience of humanization. They are, in short, the attempt to make freedom conscious and conquered in the process of creating societies, in the emancipatory trajectory of man » (SOUSA JUNIOR, 2011, p. 148).

44As Marilena Chauí (1990 apud SOUSA JUNIOR, 2011, p. 170) points out, based on the notion of democracy as an invention of Claude Lefort, only

[...] active citizenship is that which is capable of making the leap from interest to rights, which is therefore capable of placing in society the existence of a new subject, of a subject that is characterized by its self-position as a subject of rights, that creates these rights and in the movement of creating these rights demands that they be declared, whose declaration opens up reciprocal recognition. The space of active citizenship, therefore, is that of the creation of rights, of the guarantee of these rights and of intervention, of direct participation in the space of political decision-making.

45In these terms, as Sousa Junior (2011) proposes, it is essential to understand that social protagonisms are intrinsically linked to the struggles for the satisfaction of needs and the conquest of autonomy, as well as the recognition of rights, which are expressed through citizenship actions that point to strategies and methods of organization, aiming to defend forms of coexistence, establish alliances, ensure rights and build life projects. The current constitution itself, which represents one of the main milestones in this process of building citizenship, is the result of an experience that demonstrates awareness of social protagonism (SOUSA JUNIOR, 2014). However, if on the one hand, « the current constitution, called the citizen constitution, alludes to this process in which the active core of law is established, subjective rights, social rights, fundamental rights » (SOUSA JUNIOR, 2014, p. 40), and on the other hand, the understanding of rights as a fixed set of norms is insufficient, it is necessary to understand that they are products of a democratic experiment in constant mediation (as Lefort argues), which shapes and reaffirms new subjectivities, new reciprocities, new rights over time (SOUSA JUNIOR, 2014).

46As Douzinas (2019) states, if the contemporary history of human rights can teach us anything, it is that bridging the gap between the « abstract man » and the « concrete citizen » will most likely not be achieved solely through the action of formal rights. We therefore need to establish a new praxis of human rights based not on generic idealisms or rational metaphysical plans, but on a return to the very utopian and revolutionary nature of these rights, linked to the freedom to resist, to contest and to imagine new political and existential arrangements (DOUZINAS, 2009). According to Warat (1997, p. 77), « the expansion of the political practice of human rights requires that we transcend the juristic imaginary, overcome its dependence on the ideal of the rule of law and recognize its transformative power ». This means that the fight for human rights, for the realization of citizenship and the full exercise of justice involves, above all, political action and social mobilization, and not just the formalization of a set of abstract norms without any penetration into local reality and lacking the principles of legitimacy that come from historical awareness.

48Under the designation of « urban social movements », Bello (2011) explains that these social groups are linked to conflicts and interests specific to cities, dialectically connecting the perspective of class struggle (socioeconomic distribution) with new identity and cultural demands (struggle for recognition). This understanding takes into account the central importance of urban space as the main site of political disputes in the late 20th and early 21st centuries (BELLO, 2011). According to Castells (1999), these new social movements, organized in a given territory and aiming at common objectives, are capable of fostering processes of social mobilization with a pre-established purpose, such as meeting urban demands and living conditions and collective consumption, reaffirming local cultural identity, as well as seeking political autonomy and citizen participation. In other words, it is, as Lefebvre (2001, p. 7) pointed out, the search for the practice of a right: the « right to the city », that is, the right to urban life, in particular, and to an authentic existence in broader terms; « a condition for a renewed humanism and democracy ». In Harvey’s view (2012, p. 14):

The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from the kind of social ties, relationships with nature, lifestyles, technologies and aesthetic values we desire. The right to the city is far removed from individual freedom of access to urban resources: it is the right to change ourselves by changing the city. Moreover, it is a common right before an individual right, since this transformation inevitably depends on the exercise of a collective power to shape the process of urbanization. The freedom to build and rebuild the city and ourselves is, as I seek to argue, one of the most precious and neglected of human rights.

49In this sense, according to Jacobi (1986a), the right to the city, the democratization of local power and popular participation ultimately become a common denominator, as an expression of a collective will of citizens, based on the territorial expression of their needs and desires. As Holston (1996, p. 249) reiterates, « citizenship changes as new members emerge to make their demands [...] », only in this way can its scope be extended, overcoming « differential citizenship » for the emergence of « insurgent citizenship ». In this shift, the city, popular neighborhoods, and favelas must be perceived not only as receptacles for insurgency movements, but also as their object, as spaces of emerging identities and revolutionary effervescence (HOLSTON, 2013). Thus, « the new spaces of citizenship that result from this are mainly a product of the compaction and reterritorialization of so many new residents with histories, cultures, and demands that break with the normative and accepted categories of social life » (HOLSTON, 1996, p. 249).

50Therefore, as Lojkine (1997, 324) asserts, « there is no analysis of urban social movements independent of the analysis of the articulation with ‘social movements linked to production’ and which directly evokes the issue of political power ». In other words, the revolutionary possibilities arising from the action of these movements are based on the unsociable articulation of local issues with the general political struggle. Thus, since the « urban » is the privileged place, according to Lojkine (1997), of the socialized reproduction of human and material productive forces, there also resides « the possibility [of these movements] to directly contest not only the economic power of the dominant class, but also the mode of reproduction of the whole, of social formation, both economic and social » (LOJKINE, 1997, p. 323, author’s emphasis).

51The example of the Calabar community in Salvador, Bahia, corroborates the perspective defended here that the affirmation of citizenship, triggered from a territorial anchorage, is constituted from demands and strategies of a claim generated in the struggles of collective subjects and social movements (CORREIA; SOUZA; MENEZES, 2023). Since its origin, Calabar has been a place of resistance and struggle for survival. The lack of public policies and investments in infrastructure transformed the place into a precarious cluster of improvised housing, without basic sanitation, running water or electricity. Over the following decades, the population of Calabar grew and organized itself around common demands, such as the creation of a residents’ association, the construction of a school, a daycare center and a community library. These struggles were marked by police repression, the criminalization of social movements, and violence against residents (CONCEIÇÃO, 1986; GIUDICE; SOUZA, 2000; FREITAS, 2020). The history of the people of Calabar is, therefore, the history of a community that, by rising up against inequalities and socio-racial injustices, sought to build new ways of living, coexisting, learning, teaching, living, working, fighting, in short, of existing and resisting. According to Ana Cláudia de Jesus Barreto (2020, p. 164-165):

Calabar’s trajectory reaffirms this resistance against the racist, hierarchical, segregationist society that excludes the undesirables who live in the cities and who have « color » and a geographic address. However, the residents of Calabar were against the urban order planned to serve the hegemonic classes. They challenged the interests of the real estate market and the government by organizing a residents’ association and confronting public managers at meetings. They pushed for urban improvements in the community through demonstrations and the implementation of study and theater groups. In addition, they built the open school, a health center, and a community daycare center, with the active participation of women, who were the creators of these public facilities.

53This is why « favelas » emerge as places of great revolutionary potential, because at the same time that they expose the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production of space, they also articulate new spatialities or, as Lefebvre (2001) would say, new centralities. As Roberto Lobato Corrêa (1989, p. 30) states, « it is in the production of the favela, on invaded [occupied] public or private lands, that excluded social groups effectively become shaping agents, producing their own space, in most cases independently and in spite of other agents ». In this sense, as these excluded subjects engage in these struggles to claim and conquer spaces and rights within the city, their actions go beyond the satisfaction of local demands and enter a broader political sphere of resistance and transformation. In other words, the emergence of new political subjects in marginalized territories not only reflects the capacity of these subjects to conquer and enforce basic rights, but also highlights the capacity of these movements for political mobilization and articulation around common objectives, which can promote significant changes in the social and urban space:

The favela, a space for peripheral citizens, is understood within the circuits of the hegemonic city as a territory averse to civility and urbanity. This leads us to understand that the ways in which city inhabitants relate to each other and the spatial divisions that arise from this dynamic involve not only the geographic segmentation of this space, but a symbolic structuring of the uses and discourses that permeate it. This structure is based on the capitalist mode of production, which not only commodifies space (transforming urban land into a commodity), but also articulates the ideological processes of domination and plundering of disadvantaged urban areas. Thus, speaking of the right to the city means speaking not only of the need to enforce human and fundamental rights, but of the need for a real and radical change in the way we relate to space and produce new spatialities. In this sense, the political experience of the Calabar neighborhood and the actions of the social movements present in this community point towards new strategies for the production of space and urban life that oppose the hegemonic capitalist pattern. Through political mobilization and collective action, these movements have challenged traditional power structures, demanding not only individual and collective rights, but also redefining community relations and the way in which urban spaces are used and (re)constructed (CORREIA; SOUZA; MENEZES, 2023, p. 146).

54This is why the struggle of the residents of Calabar is so important and represents an example of resistance and engagement in the search for spatial justice. This struggle is not limited to resistance against violent actions by the state or the market, but also involves the conception of new forms of organization and citizen participation that can contribute to the integral transformation of everyday life and urban reality, which is its most radical and profound meaning. This is also why it is crucial that the struggle for the right to the city be seen as a collective political praxis that involves the active and conscious participation of all citizens-city dwellers in the construction of new spatialities, new centralities, new ways of living and producing the city. Only in this way will it be possible to overcome the capitalist mode of production of space that defines the contemporary city — fragmented, unequal, exclusionary and transformed into a commodity — in order to build the « space of people » as a vector for the affirmation of human freedom that develops in history and in social struggles.

55In these terms, as Ani Fani Alessandri Carlos (1994, p. 263) reiterates, « the formulation of urban issues is not limited to the city, but refers to people, their lives, their struggles, their world, and opens up perspectives for thinking about transformations ». And it is, therefore, at the heart of this emancipatory project that the fight for the right to the city must be understood as part of the political-territorial dialectic of the exercise of citizenship. Only social struggle can challenge the immobility of the positivist/dominant discourse of human rights, transforming the discourse into substantive practices of conquest, implementation and renewal of these rights from an emancipatory perspective. In fact, the territory is the ground where these practices are driven, it is the terrain where they materialize and, as Gomes (1997) emphasizes, often the very condition for their existence.

Final considerations

56Citizenship is not simply a representation of individuals within the state (or even limited to the state); rather, it is a much more complex phenomenon that affects the context of everyday socio-territorial dynamics (GOMES, 1997). In this sense, if we want to establish a new civic model, based on the equitable distribution of social wealth and the equal promotion of citizenship rights, then, more than ever, social inclusion policies and strategies need to incorporate the political-territorial dimension as a founding core for achieving these purposes. Furthermore, the political-territorial self-affirmation of citizens implies not only the demand for rights, but also, as Jacobi (1986b) asserts, the construction of a collective and class consciousness that values diversity and desires and promotes the active participation of individuals in the very process of (re)producing space and everyday life.

57As we have seen, exclusion has a territorial materialization, so the restructuring of urban space as a space of inclusion and full access to essential goods and services and everyday life itself is a condition for the radicalization of citizenship and human rights. Social movements and collective subjects play a central role in this process. If citizenship is an exercise — and, more than that, a territorial exercise — then the political struggle that takes place in order to perform its emancipatory function, must predispose the subjects themselves, with their multiple identities and experiences, aware of themselves and their rights, to collectively rise up against the ideological structures of plunder and control sustained by the capitalist mode of production of space and everyday life. Only in this way will these movements be able to move towards a dialectical and emancipatory process of social transformation; with the creation of a « new space », as Lefebvre (2006, p. 86) would say, « a revolutionary transformation [that] is verified by the creative capacity of works in everyday life, in language, in space [...] ».

58In this sense, what can be inferred from the path taken is that citizenship cannot be reduced to a set of formal rights; it manifests itself in everyday practice and in the territorial dynamics that permeate people’s lives. Thus, the relationship between citizenship and territory is fundamental to understanding how rights are experienced, claimed and implemented. The territory is understood here as a field of political and symbolic struggles and arrangements; of (re)production of the material and existential conditions of the subjects, who exercise their citizenship in the territory and, also in the territory, perceive themselves as subjects in the world. Therefore, thinking about new forms of citizenship also requires always and increasingly rethinking new territorialities.

59The struggle of the residents of Calabar, mentioned as a specific case in this work, is a fragment in the totality of the struggles that erupt, every minute, at every moment, in the most confined areas of our cities. The actions of these social movements and political collectives demonstrate how popular mobilization can be effective in transforming spaces and building active citizenship. Thus, by invoking a new form of citizenship — an « insurgent citizenship », as Holston (2013) would say —, these subjects seek a form of political participation that goes beyond traditional forms of representation. Furthermore, these displacements also promote a redefinition of the values and social relations that permeate the city and traverse its space, seeking new ways of coexistence and socio-spatial organization, pointing to the need for a change in the city’s political culture, in order to contemplate the interests and needs of the dispossessed and oppressed classes and not just the economic power and the dominant classes.

60The political mobilization of social movements is essential for the construction of this new urban paradigm, as it allows for the expansion of the debate on urban issues, the creation of new forms of political participation, the demand for public policies that meet the demands of the most vulnerable populations, and the realization of citizenship rights. Furthermore, the political mobilization of social movements can also be an important tool for the creation of new spatial meanings and forms in cities. This is because these movements are composed of groups that are often on the margins of the hegemonic process of production of urban space, such as residents of favelas, occupations, and other territories of exclusion. By mobilizing, these groups can demand a new city model and demand changes in urban policies.

61It can be concluded, therefore, that the political and social cartography of citizenship, from an emancipatory perspective, requires not only the recognition and defense of individual and collective rights, but also the « right to resist »; to resist in the territory, from the « horizontality » created in solidarity in the daily struggles against the « verticalized » structures that perpetuate inequalities and that manifest themselves in the very social stratification of space. As Roberto Lyra Filho (2006, p. 6) reminds us, paraphrasing Ernst Bloch, « there is no true establishment of human rights without the end of exploitation; there is no true end to exploitation without the establishment of human rights ». Likewise, there is no true establishment of citizenship without an equitable territorial distribution of the goods and services indispensable for a dignified life; there is no equitable distribution of these goods and services without the establishment of a citizenship that fully incorporates the territorial component.