Marginality: from myth to reality in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, 1969-2002

Abstract

This chapter is based on the preliminary findings of a longitudinal panel study. As in the original work, it draws on both qualitative and quantitative methods. Phase I involved a feasibility study to determine the possibility of finding the original participants after thirty years, and the conducting of in-depth interviews with as many as we were able to locate. Phase II saw the creation of a survey instrument based on that used in the original research, the pretest and modification of this questionnaire, and its application to the original participants (or their spouses or eldest children in cases where the original interviewee was no longer living). A third phase of the work is currently underway, including interviews with a random sample of the original participants' children; the completion of a series of contextual interviews about the communities themselves, leading to a \'collective\' reconstruction of each community's history; and a year-by-year analysis of individual lives, documenting all changes in residential, occupational, educational and family conditions