Refugiados urbanos em trânsito permanente: efeitos menos visíveis da produção de uma cidade olímpica

In this article I present and reflect on the less visible effects of governmental policies implemented during the preparation and execution of mega events in the city of Rio de Janeiro during the first and second decades of the XXI century. I first present the policies of “pacification” and “urban ordering”, put in place during this period, connecting them to what I will call urban refugees. Next, I present the mechanisms that produced and maintained homeless people in a permanent transit through the city and between different confinement and semi-confinement institutions. I look to reflect on the political uses of visibility and invisibility of those bodies in the context of what is claimed in official state and media discourses as “public space”. I shall base this reflection on fieldwork done between 2015-2017 in two municipal shelters - one for women and the other for men. Beyond these institutions’ walls, tracing the “polyphony” constituted by the “issue” of homeless people, I also bring to this text, journalistic material and state administrative/ bureaucratic documents.