EDUCATIONAL INSURGENCY IN SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL

In many informal settlements—whether called barrios, favelas, or slums—residents not only build their own homes but also establish schools when educational services are lacking. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic research in São Paulo, this chapter examines how schools repurposed from housing stock function as both educational infrastructure and acts of insurgent urbanism, reshaping informally built landscapes. These hybrid physical and social spaces expose the limits of treating education as an auxiliary service, instead revealing it as a core element of urban form and spatial justice.