Governing heterogeneity in the context of ‘compulsory closeness’: the ‘pacification’ of favelas

In Brazil, to speak of the ‘suburb’ is to evoke a rhetoric of need and subordination, and in Rio de Janeiro this is even more the case because, there, ‘suburb’ tends to connote something very different from the usually upper- or middle-class neighbourhoods the same term brings to mind, say, in the United States. This is because, in general, in wealthier countries the term mostly connotes affluence and ‘white flights’, while in the Global South it can include both such wealthier areas and the largely impoverished peripheries. This is very much the case in Rio: to live in a ‘suburb’, there, tends to mean that one comes from a poorer background and needs to content oneself with living far removed from the cultural, social and economic centre of the city inhabited by elites – often, suburbanites spend up to three hours only to get to their jobs, and then the same amount of time to get back home again at the end of a tiresome day.