Francesca Pilo: Regularising favelas through electricity

With the hosting of several international events having brought security concerns back into the spotlight, the Rio de Janeiro state government introduced a new public security policy in late 2008 to regain territorial control of a large number of favelas, relying on the Police Pacification Units (UPP). In this context, the authorities have partially revised their plan for the integration of the favelas.

Since the 1990s, it has been viewed primarily in terms of urban planning, through the improvement of infrastructure and access routes, as well as, to a lesser extent, land and urban regularisation. Now, the authorities are planning to promote ‘integration through regularisation’ of commercial and administrative relations, bringing together the various stakeholders from the public and private sectors.

This thesis examines the integration of favelas from a perspective that has received little attention: that of regularisation through the electricity grid, the aim of which is to transform ‘illegal users’ into new ‘registered customers’, linked to the distribution company via a meter. In particular, we will focus on highlighting the interplay between public and private interests at work in electricity regularisation projects in two favelas, Santa Marta and Cantagalo. To this end, our analysis aims to examine the regularisation of the electricity supply through its tools – socio-technical (installation of meters and network upgrades), commercial (methods of bill collection) and those for managing electricity consumption – and how subscribers adapt to them.

Research shows that the formalisation of the electricity supply reshapes the relationship between favela residents and the state and the market, a process that faces certain limitations: the contractual commercial relationship struggles to be grounded in a relationship of trust; measures to control consumption focus on ‘bringing behaviour into line with standards’ rather than supporting usage patterns; the regularisation of the service reproduces rather than overcomes socio-economic inequalities, which are, moreover, gradually losing their political character. This thesis thus aims to contribute to a better understanding of the ways in which favelas are integrated within the framework of the increasing neoliberalisation of urban policies.