INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH 1067

DOI:10.1111/1468-2427.12300

— URBAN POVERTY, SEGREGATION AND

SOCIAL NETWORKS IN SÃO PAULO AND
SALVADOR, BRAZIL
eduardo marques

Abstract
General consensus exists concerning the relevance of networks and space in pov­
erty situations, despite a considerable dispute on the prominence of each element. While
social-support and poverty debates highlight the joint importance of space and networks,
the research agenda on contemporary communities suggests that networks have recently
started replacing space in social integration. These debates mainly consider networks and
ties normatively and are restricted to the global North, hampering the formulation of
comparative interpretations and more theoretical conclusions. This article discusses the
relationship between space, sociability and poverty, based on research results on net­works
of poor individuals in two major Brazilian metropolises––Salvador and São Paulo.
Research indicates the existence of great heterogeneity in the networks of poor individu­als,
although with substantial differences, on average, to middle-class individuals. Certain
types of networks and sociability are systematically associated with better living condi­
tions, employment and income. Additionally, network mobilization by individuals presents
important regularities associated with social mechanisms, understood as regular pat­terns
that trigger or cause certain results. These mechanisms explain to a great extent the heter­
ogeneity of networks, and mediate the individual’s access to opportunities and every­day
assistance. They therefore contribute decisively to the production (and reproduction) of
urban poverty.

Introduction
This article discusses the relationships between space, sociability and social
conditions in Brazilian metropolises. The relationships between these elements have
already been explored by numerous authors, but either in a fragmented way (focusing
only on some of these elements) or generically (without examining in detail each spe­ci­
fic effect). This article aims to present an analysis of the combined effects of sociability
and space on urban poverty.
The debate on social support has already emphasized the importance of space in
determining living conditions, while studies on poverty, in particular, have highlighted
the role of residential segregation. The literature on this issue has discussed the impor­
tance of relationships and of networks. However, the majority of studies take networks
as metaphors of relations, or treat these normatively. Nonetheless it has been well
established that individuals construct (and continuously reconstruct) space through
the diverse activities they engage in in their day-to-day sociability; at the same time
this sociability depends on, and interacts dynamically with, the existing urban space.
However, precisely how the relations that emerge from these activities are configured
needs to be detailed. Finally, the research agenda on contemporary communities
has recently indicated that networks are replacing space in terms of enabling social
integration.

The original text of this article was first presented as the IJURR Lecture at the 2014 Conference of the American
Association of Geographers in Tampa (the video is available to view at http.//www.ijurr.org/lecture-series/). I thank
IJURR for the opportunity. I also thank the three anonymous IJURR reviewers for their important comments, which
helped me substantially in transforming the lecture into the present article.

© 2016 urban research publications limited

 MARQUES 1068

Although residential segregation and social relations are both present in analyses
of poverty, we do not know with any precision how the combination of both elements
affects living conditions. This article seeks to help bridge this gap by presenting findings
from research on the social networks of poor individuals living in two major Brazilian
cities––São Paulo and Salvador.
As we shall see, networks of poor individuals tend to be smaller, less varied, more
local and more often based on primary sociability than middle-class networks. Regard­
less of these general differences, there was substantial variation within each group.
Additionally, certain types of networks and sociability were systematically associated
with better living conditions, employment and income. The mobilization of these net­
works by individuals to solve everyday problems revealed significant regularities asso­
ciated with social mechanisms, understood as consistent patterns that trigger or lead
to certain outcomes. These mechanisms explain a great deal about the heterogeneity
of networks and, in conjunction with certain network types, mediate the individual’s
access to opportunities and everyday assistance. This article specifies these processes
in order to contribute to the debates on urban segregation and on the reproduction of
poverty.
Existing debates are mostly limited to the global North, hampering the formu­
lation of comparative interpretations and the production of more theoretical conclu­
sions. Therefore, this article also intends to contribute on this point. The first section
covers case selection and generalization of the argument in more depth, but it is worth
pointing out in advance that the two cities chosen, São Paulo and Salvador, clearly share
many features and processes with metropolises in the global North, yet are also marked
by several key differences, some of them also common to large cities of the urban North.
Hence, these cases are useful for understanding both the specificity of the associations
between space, networks and poverty in the urban South, and the effects of these
elements on cities in general.
The article includes three sections in addition to this introduction and the con­
clusion. In the following section, I briefly discuss existing contributions and debates in
the field. The third section outlines the main features of the cases and the research
design. The fourth section reports on the main findings, in dialogue with the literature
surveyed in the first section. Finally, I summarize the most important arguments in the
conclusion.

Where do we stand?
The multiple connections between urban space, sociability and living conditions
were already present in the work of the founding fathers of social sciences at the begin­
ning of the twentieth century, although obviously conceptualized in different terms. A
prime example is Simmel (1955 [1922]) and his idea of social circles and the interplay
between physical proximity and anonymity that shapes the mental life of the modern
metropolis (Simmel, 1976 [1903]). In fact, connections between space and living
conditions can already be found at the heart of accounts of living conditions and social
reform initiatives in the mid-nineteenth century, inspired first by miasmatic and later
by hygienist views of health–disease relationships. These include Edwin Chadwick’s
1842 report on sanitary conditions in Britain, Snow’s account of cholera (1990 [1855]),
Engels’ ‘The situation of the working class in England’ (2008 [1845]), and Charles
Booth’s 1899 map of London poverty.1

1 Booth’s map is available at http://booth.lse.ac.uk/cgi-bin/do.pl?sub=view_booth_and_barth&args=531000,18040

0,6,large,5 (accessed 28 September 2015).
 URBAN POVERTY, SEGREGATION AND SOCIAL NETWORKS IN BRAZIL 1069

It would also be impossible not to highlight the role of space in the studies of
social behavior and daily practices of urbanites undertaken by the first Chicago School
in the 1920s. This insight was central both to Burgess’s model of spatial competition
and succession (Burgess, 1973 [1925]) and to Park’s claim for considering the ‘city as the
natural habitat of the civilized man’ (Park et al., 1973 [1925]: 27). The second Chicago
School continued to focus on this relationship, although in a less structured way, as is
evident from the importance attributed to secondary sociability in Wirth (1938) or in
Foote-Whyte’s study of the street corner (1993 [1943]).
Over time, however, and especially from the second half of the twentieth cen­
tury onward, other spatial scales, beyond sociability, attracted the attention of the social
sciences. In sociology and in political science, this might be explained by the hegemonic
role of structural functionalism and behaviorism, which valued social structures and
behavior––perhaps excessively so––but nonetheless still treated them as abstract by-
products of other processes. This was reinforced by the hegemony of structuralism
within Marxism between the 1960s and the 1980s.
Possibly the most important exceptions came from anthropology, although the
discipline produced quite different perspectives. These included studies of Mexican
families and migrants (Lewis, 1959) that led to the original concept of the culture of
poverty, the introduction of social networks into the social sciences by the Manches­
ter School (Mitchell, 1969) and the account of daily life in a black neighborhood in
Washington, which revisits ‘the corner’ and challenges the idea of a culture of poverty
(Hannerz, 1969), to list only a few.
A collective concern with the connections between space, sociability and social
conditions returned at the end of the 1980s, following Wilson (1987), on which the
theoretical foundations of this article are based. Wilson revived the debate on new forms
of urban poverty in the United States by showing that the intensification of poverty in
major cities was the combined result of: (1) economic transformations that reduced
employment and income among the poorest (a macroprocess); and (2) the rising con­
centration of poverty and an increasing social homogeneity within areas regarded as
black ghettos (a mesoprocess). The increasing segregation of disadvantaged groups was
produced by the migration of the black middle class out of the ghetto (micro elements),
which reduced local job opportunities and the circulation of repertoires, leading to the
collapse of the local community.
In response to these phenomena, a lengthy research agenda, developed in the
United States, focused on diverse issues such as the role of race (Massey and Denton,
1993), segregation patterns (Jargowsky, 1997; Logan and Stults, 2011), the influence
of housing choices (Briggs, 2005; Curley, 2008) and the characteristics and analytical
relevance of the term ghetto (Hutchinson and Haynes, 2012). This line of study
argued that segregated individuals tend to live in worse social conditions because
they possess fewer connections with other social groups and thus have less access to
services and opportunities. Although this view takes into account the combined effects
of segregation and sociability in determining social conditions (and vice versa), the
literature proposed a consistent set of relationships between social relations, social
conditions and space: worse social conditions meant more isolated networks and
higher segregation. However, as we shall see in our two case studies, these elements are
far from perfectly aligned, which has important consequences for poverty reproduction
and the alleviation thereof.
A second line of study that focused on the topic of poverty in the United States
was inspired by the ecological tradition and evoked the existence of what is known
as neighborhood effects. Based on a substantial volume of empirical evidence on the
contiguity and spatial concentration of certain phenomena, authors such as Robert
Sampson (2013) have argued for the importance of a territorially bounded collective
 MARQUES 1070

efficacy–– ‘social cohesion combined with shared expectations for social control’ (ibid.:
27) in promoting behaviors across certain areas of the territory. Although the evidence
for these regularities convinces me, it seems to amount only to empirical regularities,
not social processes. Social control and collective efficacy may be present, but as
studies of Brazilian cities (Zaluar and Ribeiro, 2009) have shown, the presence of
mutual trust and collective recognition are not enough to prevent crime. Several other
elements are also important, including the state and its institutions, along with other
practices and elements of sociability (including networks) with independent effects on
poverty and on social cohesion.
A third line of analysis of poverty was developed by Wacquant (2008a); it is
located somewhere between the US and European traditions. This approach inves­
tigated and compared urban poverty in France and North America, maintaining that
contemporary poverty is not a residual effect or caused by lack of economic development,
but derives from the present pattern of economic development and state protection. In
this analysis, processes of economic restructuring, outsourcing and the hegemony of
the financial markets are said to have deconstructed the wage-labor relationship that
shaped class formation under Fordism. In spatial terms, poor neighborhoods have lost
their meaning as places, becoming marked today by territorial stigmas. The other side
of these processes, Wacquant argues, is the retrenchment of welfare, accompanied by
a massive rise in incarceration of the poor. In extremes cases, this has led to a replace­
ment of the welfare state by a prison state (Wacquant, 2010). Although this account
makes sense for some geographic locations, it fails to account for the reality of countries
such as Brazil, where such retrenchment did not occur and where massive incarceration
is localized and limited to specific subnational units.2 Indeed, taken in a broader sense,
the existence of these non-conforming cases suggests the difficulty of transforming
this framework into a general theory, exemplifying the importance of local politics and
policies for understanding each specific situation (Marques, 2011).
The fourth line of reasoning in the United States emerged from academia, but
was disseminated by multilateral organizations. According to this view, poverty should
not be studied only based on what people lack (welfare) but also on what they possess:
certain assets and resources. In this argument, social vulnerability arises in part from
the absence of such assets, producing what Moser (1998) calls asset vulnerability. These
resources include tangible assets (such as land tenure) and intangible assets (family
relations and social capital, for example). I agree that we need to avoid a ‘sociology
of absence’, as critiqued by Wacquant (2008a), and I also agree that poor people own
resources and build strategies. However, poor people are usually so heavily constrained
by processes, structures and a general lack of opportunities that by focusing on resources
we may well gain insight into their strategies for coping with poverty, but lose sight of
the larger picture of poverty reproduction.
The debate on the other side of the Atlantic, especially in continental Europe,
evolved quite differently. The return of urban poverty has been discussed since the
beginning of the 1990s, the discussion differentiating between the study of the poor and
the study of poverty (Mingione, 1996). Here, poverty is seen to be caused by changes
in welfare provision that originate from the markets and everyday sociability, as well
as from the state (Esping-Andersen, 1990). Demographic shifts––aging populations,
migration and altering family structures––and changes in state policies, policy reforms
and the retrenchment of welfare initiatives, for example, all have a key role in the
transformations shaping contemporary European cities (Kazepov, 2005). Poverty is
explored as a multidimensional phenomenon (Mingione, 1996; Power, 1996) that is

2 This is regardless of what Wacquant (2008b) himself has written concerning Rio de Janeiro, based on scattered and
partial information. For a more specific critique, see Marques (2011).
 URBAN POVERTY, SEGREGATION AND SOCIAL NETWORKS IN BRAZIL 1071

associated with a relative lack of welfare produced by several processes and linked to
multidimensional (not only economic) dimensions, as explored by Mingione (1996).
This absence of welfare is determined by a combined lack of access to the state, the
market and solidarity/community/family, within a process that is heavily mediated by
urban space and local neighborhoods (Musterd et al., 2006). Analyses should therefore
focus on the different (and changing) combinations of welfare provision from these
three spheres.
In this article, in response to this literature, I assume that an individual’s access
to these spheres is not direct but mediated by mid-level structures such as networks and
segregation. So, albeit with crossed signals, social networks and segregation mediate an
individual’s access to what Ruben Kaztman (1999) called ‘structures of opportunities’
or what Musterd et al. (2006) term ‘sources of welfare’. More specifically, networks can
help overcome geographical barriers and social spaces, affording individuals access to
wider social circles. To understand this we need to combine studies of segregation and
networks.
Segregation is a traditional theme in continental Europe (Preteceille, 2006;
Maloutas, 2007; Maloutas, 2012; Dominguez, et al., 2012, among others), but interest in
the effect of networks is only starting to develop, albeit at an increasing rate. Except for
the research into networks of social support and migration (Jariego, 2003; Molina et al.,
2009) or sociability in general (Bidart, 2009; Degenne, 2009), the tone of a substantial
portion of existing studies is clearly normative. By normative I mean that researchers
grant too much intentionality to relationships, or search for types of ties or networks
that are predefined as good or bad according to their theoretically deduced advantages.
The same applies to much of the debate on social capital (on both sides of the Atlantic).
I set out from the assumption that each network (and tie) may produce negative or
positive consequences (sometimes simultaneously), and that identical networks may
be used differently by different individuals or by the same person in diverse situations.
Hence, the issue is not only one of classifying ties as strong or weak, or conceiving of
their roles in bridging or bonding, but about investigating what networks are like, how
they are mobilized and what effects they have.
When poverty was first studied in Latin America in the 1970s, it was already
connected with urban segregation but strongly influenced by two broad macronarra­
tives, both very far removed from the analysis of sociability. The first was development
theory. As is widely known, urbanization in Latin America is a fairly recent process,
dating back to the 1940s and 1950s, when rapid huge-scale migration from rural areas
constructed the largest metropolises in the wealthiest parts of the region’s largest coun­
tries. Only a portion of these flows was absorbed by urban markets, leading to unemploy­
ment and precarious jobs (the informal economy), as well as a pattern of spatial pro­
duction in poor areas marked by inequalities and vulnerability. Development theory
explained migration based on wage differences between rural and urban jobs, and
unemployment was seen as a product of the mismatch between rates of urbanization
and industrialization. These problems, it was argued, would be ‘naturally’ solved over
time, and as the number of potential migrants declined, the wage differentials would
too (Costa Pinto, 1967). Intense modernization brought people with rural behaviors
to the cities where, detached from their rural origins, they abandoned their authority-
based relationships and traditional economic activities. Consequently they developed
anomic, provincial, unsubordinated and lazy behavior, ending up as ‘urban marginals’.
This interpretation was quite similar to the already mentioned ‘culture-of-poverty’
explanation and similarly blamed the victims for their own problems.
Development theory was intensely criticized by dependence theory (Cardoso
and Faletto, 1977) and later by several other theoretical currents in Latin America.
Authors developed two complementary critiques in relation to urban poverty. The first
 MARQUES 1072

group of studies set out from Marxist structural analysis to argue that these supposed
‘marginals’ were, in fact, functional elements of the region’s peripheral capitalist
economies. These countries provided low-paid and poorly regulated labor forces to
the world capitalist system, enabled by the presence of large and diversified informal
economies that maintained a large reservoir of industrial labor, forcing down wages.
This configuration was assisted by the authoritarian political regimes holding power
in the region between the 1960s and 1980s (Kowarick, 1979). Hence, even during the
most intense periods of economic growth––or precisely because of them––poverty was
produced on a large scale (Camargo, 1976). This literature created dialogue at a distance
with the French urban sociology school, but was produced independently of it.
Other authors complemented these studies by developing ethnographic
accounts of the poor, showing that their everyday representations did not diverge sig­
nificantly from those of mainstream society. They were similarly organized around the
ideas of progress, individual work/effort, family sacrifice/savings and survival strategies,
with goals similar to those of other social groups, although they were using different stra­
tegies based on their specific resources and life perspectives (Perlman, 1977; Durham,
1988). Similar results for Mexico were found by Lomnitz (1975) and later by Gonzales
de la Rocha (2001).
This literature also led to the development of a rich tradition of studies on urban
space in Brazil, especially concerning the peripheries. The latter were characterized
by the absence of infrastructure (concentrated in upper-class areas), by precarious
and irregular settlements (Bonduki and Rolnik, 1982), and by favelas, built through
collective self-help processes. This pattern of urbanization was seen to subject the
working population to a kind of exploitation derived from their marginal insertion
in urban space, a phenomenon Kowarick (1979) termed ‘urban spoliation’. The state
classically reinforced segregation by constructing large-scale housing developments in
outlying areas (Maricato, 1987; Sabatini et al., 2005).
Since the 1990s three distinct (and opposing) approaches have emerged. One
current continues to focus on ‘holistic’, systemic or broad economic dynamics, mobilizing
the themes of economic restructuring, neoliberalism, macroeconomic policies and the
international division of labor to explain poverty (Cabannes and Georges, 2009). This
tradition takes space and segregation to be elements of poverty in general. A second
approach also associates poverty with individual attributes, strategies and behaviors,
especially among economists (Ferreira, 2000). This approach considers space as merely
an environmental element, at most, as found in studies of neighborhood effects. This
view tends to be hegemonic today in Brazil. A third but less influential sociological
tradition explores the multidimensionality of poverty and examines phenomena such
as survival strategies, segregation and sociability (Telles and Cabannes, 2006). In this
case, sociability is foregrounded but not analyzed systematically.
I believe this problem can be solved through the combined study of networks and
segregation. This combination provides the means for a systematic analysis of socia­bility
patterns, allowing us to understand the mechanisms by which poverty is reproduced
via networks and spaces. Before I started work on this project, I had developed several
‘traditional’ studies of both poverty and segregation in Brazilian cities, produced
poverty maps and typologies (understood as multidimensional, as explored in CEM,
2006), discussed the connections between segregation and inequalities (Marques and
Torres, 2005), the distribution of social structure in space (Marques et al., 2012), and
analyzed public policies and inequalities in the access to services (Marques and Bichir,
2003). Although I learned substantially from these studies, the durability of poverty and
inequalities in the region troubled me, suggesting that the mutual causality between
segregation, poverty and networks should be considered simultaneously in order to
capture the complexity of the phenomena.
 URBAN POVERTY, SEGREGATION AND SOCIAL NETWORKS IN BRAZIL 1073

The study3 and some definitions

The study thus focused on the networks of poor individuals who are submitted
to different degrees of segregation in São Paulo and Salvador, as well as the mobilization
of these networks to solve day-to-day problems. I studied the personal networks of
362 individuals living in poverty in 12 different places (seven in São Paulo and five in
Salvador), focusing on segregation and housing conditions, as well as 30 networks of
middle-class individuals, in order to create a benchmark.
During the first phase of research, the 392 networks were generated using
network-analysis techniques, based on primary data obtained in interviews. Next, I
returned to the field in both cities to implement the qualitative phase of the research,
undertaking 43 in-depth interviews focusing on how people mobilized their networks
to solve their problems. My hypothesis was that networks, as mapped in our research,
are descriptive and static pictures of dynamic relational patterns. Different individuals
(or the same individual in distinct situations) will mobilize the networks differently. It
is not enough, therefore, to map networks and compare them quantitatively. We must
also understand how they are used.
However, before I move on to the research itself, it will be useful to provide
some background information on the cities and explain some of the conceptual and
methodological choices relating to the case selection, generalization and research
design.
São Paulo is South America’s largest city, home to around 20 million inhabitants
in 2010 (roughly 10% of Brazil’s population). It harbors intense social inequalities,
since it is also the most important city economically, accounting for 19% of Brazilian
GDP, comparable in scale to the Chilean or Hong Kong economies. It has been the most
important destination for internal migration for decades, although both migration and
demographic growth have declined significantly over recent decades. With 3.2 million
inhabitants (1.5% of the country’s population) Salvador is the largest and most important
city in the northeast of Brazil. This region is the country’s poorest, with a per-capita
GDP of R$9,600 in 2010, compared to R$25,000 in Brazil’s southeast (where São Paulo
is located). In terms of social indicators, Salvador presents a worse social situation,
although on a smaller scale: 16.7% of the population in São Paulo and 35.7% in Salvador
lived below the regional poverty lines in 2007, while 11.6% of the population lived in
precarious housing in São Paulo, compared to 25.8% in Salvador. Both metropolises are
highly unequal: while the Gini coefficient for income was 0.62 in São Paulo, it reached
0.64 in Salvador in 2010.4
The research design adopted here is not based on statistical representativeness––
something that would have been necessary had I intended to compare the influence of
specific variables across a large number of cases. Instead, this study follows the logic
of case-study analysis, concentrating on the details involved in combining processes
and contexts in a small number of in-depth studies (Skocpol and Somers, 1980). In this
kind of research, generalization is enabled through the saturation of existing situa­
tions to cover the broadest possible variation in the phenomena under scrutiny (Ragin,
1987).
It is important to add that this comparison does not fit the classical distinction
between most similar and most dissimilar systems, since it is organized into three
sequential levels: two cities, 12 research sites and 362 networks. In this case, therefore,
the cities and research sites were chosen intentionally, precisely because of the presence
3 Partial results from this project were published in English (Marques, 2012a), presenting the São Paulo case. A
second book, in Portuguese (Marques, 2012b), included the results from both São Paulo and Salvador. The
quantitative results for the city of São Paulo have been published in a previous article in IJURR (Marques, 2012c),
while other findings have been published in other, separate articles.
4 Data taken from tabnet.datasus.gov.br/; IBGE’s 2010 demographic census is available at http://www.sidra.ibge.
gov.br/cd/cd2010RgaAdAgsn.asp (both accessed 28 September 2015).
 MARQUES 1074

of important differences (Small, 2009), although they all represent precarious housing
solutions in large Brazilian metropolises. In fact, it is this interplay of differences
and similarities at successive levels of comparison that can help us reach a broader
understanding of the combined role of sociability and residential segregation in
reproducing poverty in cities of both the global South and the global North.
In each city, the choice of research sites also sought to cover the diversity of
situations in terms of housing and segregation. In São Paulo, locations included four
favelas, two non-segregated locations (one in a middle-class neighborhood and the other
in a very rich neighborhood) and two highly segregated locations (one on the outskirts
of the metropolis and the other in an industrial district), central-city tenements, one
mixed area consisting of favela and irregular settlement, and a large vertical housing
project, both on the periphery. In Salvador, the research sites included two favelas
(one in a central location and the other highly segregated), central-city tenements, a
segregated horizontal housing project, and a mixed area consisting of favela and
irregular settlement in a non-segregated location.
At this point it is crucial to define precisely what I mean by segregation and by
networks. Segregation is understood here as residential segregation, a spatial feature
associated with the patterns of separation of social groups within relatively homogenous
residential spaces. The study is especially interested in macrosegregation––the kind of
segregation that occurs at the scale of the metropolis, although segregation at other
scales also has important social consequences (Sabatini et al., 2005).
Networks, for their part, are patterns of relations created and continuously
transformed by the activities of those individuals embedded within them. In a broad
sense, all individuals in society are included in a large network in constant mutation
as people come into contact with one another, become friends, marry, fight, engage in
economic transactions, work, migrate, and so on. Fortunately, we do not need to study
the network of society as a whole, since criteria can be generated that allow us to deline­­
ate denser patterns of relations around events, activities, workplaces and everyday socia­­
bility. Relational sociology argues that this enables us to concentrate on social relations,
rather than on attributes or macroprocesses and structures as much of twentieth-century
social sciences did, criticized by Tilly (2000) and Emirbayer (1997). This approach
allows us to build a mid-level structure between macroprocesses and microbehavior,
potentially creating an analytical bridge between agency and structure.
Although a first generation of studies suggested that relational sociology should
focus on relations instead of attributes, the development of the field proved that attrib­
utes and relations interrelate with each other all the time. The connection between
the two is a process called homophily, a concept that aims to capture the finding that
it is easier to create––and especially to maintain––ties between entities with similar
attributes. What these attributes are depends on each situation and on the cleavages
that each society creates, as discussed in detail by McPherson et al. (2001). In the
case of everyday sociability, for example, in a society with clear and separate male and
female roles, this attribute could be gender, while in other societies it might be ethnicity
or religion. Since social class plays a central role in most social settings, this tends to be
an important element of homophily worldwide.
Given that much of the sociability that influences poverty and living conditions
occurs beyond a person’s immediate surroundings, I decided to analyze personal
networks rather than community networks or egonets (technically, networks are
only one step away from ego––see Lonkila, 2010). In addition to relationships, I also
considered what authors such as Degenne (2009) call interactions––elementary, short-
term connections––since a substantial proportion of daily social exchanges derive from
these ties. Their importance for solving daily problems is also underestimated, I should
add.
 URBAN POVERTY, SEGREGATION AND SOCIAL NETWORKS IN BRAZIL 1075

One final word on causality: causality in these kind of phenomena cannot be

understood as a product of the presence of certain variables, but of specific combinations
of processes and contexts, creating what Ragin (1987) called multiple conjunctural
causation. In this specific case, I believe that causality between networks/sociability,
spatial location and social conditions is multiple. Moreover, if networks influence attrib­
utes, social situations and location, then they also heavily influence the production and
transformation of social networks. In this sense, networks, attributes and social situa­
tions have been constructed over individual life trajectories, intentionally caused by
other processes, or even generated at random. If we wish to make causal claims, then
we must identify the social mechanisms embedded in networks and segregation alike.
By mechanisms I am not referring to something concrete that is ontologically present
in the networks or in space, but to how they work in our explanations, in the sense
given to the concept by Tilly (2001) and Mahoney (2001): regularities observed in social
dynamics that, in the face of certain situations, trigger or lead to certain outcomes or
cause specific processes.
Hence, networks, location in space and sociability are all part of the same overall
set of elements that form the living conditions of individuals in a multidimensional sense,
produced gradually over the course of their lives through processes that constitute
their networks and attributes simultaneously. These processes involve the combination
of strategies guided by various kinds of rationality, by chance, by decisions made by
other individuals and by events caused by various other processes. The outcomes of
these processes accumulate over time and constitute individuals as they exist at any
given moment.

Results
— Network characteristics and variability
What can we say, then, about networks of poor individuals and their relation­
ships to segregation? First of all, my data on Brazilian cities indicate the almost com­
plete absence of non-poor people in the networks of poor individuals. This social
homophily is perhaps the most important single feature of the sociability involved
in the perpetuation of poverty and social inequality. Of course, the problem does not
originate in the networks themselves but represents a relational facet of Brazilian social
structure, with far-reaching consequences in terms of social integration and cohesion.
Secondly, also regarding general characteristics, we can observe that the
personal networks of poor individuals tend to be smaller and less varied in sociability
terms than middle-class networks. They also tend to contain a much higher proportion
of persons living in the same residential area. This suggests that Barry Wellman’s (2007)
hypothesis concerning the deterritorialization of communities is specific to a particular
social group and involves only a small part of society––the rich and the middle classes––
at least in the global South.
As shown in the graph in Figure 1, the networks in São Paulo tend to be
slightly larger, less local and more varied than the average network in Salvador. But
these differences disappear when compared with the average middle-class network.
Nonetheless, there is an intense variation of network characteristics within each group,
with some networks of poor individuals being very large and varied (the largest poor
network had 179 nodes and eight different spheres of sociability).
On average, the poorest individuals tend to show very concentrated sociability
in certain spheres, notably family and neighborhood. A small but substantial number
of networks of very poor individuals had only one or two spheres. Schooling tended
to have a positive effect, while variations in network size and sociability tended to
increase (while localism tended to decrease) with schooling, even among the poorest.
This confirms findings in the literature that suggests the crucial role schooling plays
 MARQUES 1076

100
5.5 spheres
75
3.8 spheres 3.5 spheres

50

25

0
São Paulo Salvador Middle class
Nodes Localism (%)
figure 1  Size, localism and variability in networks (source: author’s research
interviews)

in creating diverse social bonds, both in terms of repertoires and in terms of the effect
of the school environment itself. Given the association between income and schooling,
the joint effect contributes to form and perpetuates ‘durable inequalities’ (Tilly, 2000).
The results confirm previous studies reported in the literature in which age
(Bidart and Lavenu, 2005) is also shown to affect networks and sociability. The elderly
possessed smaller, less varied and more local networks. They also tended to be more
family centered. This was confirmed by accounts in the qualitative interviews, which
reported a substantial shrinkage in network size following retirement and the death
of certain relatives and friends. Contrary to popular belief, however, I did not find
big differences in the networks of very young individuals, except for a larger localism
and a stronger concentration on the educational and friendship spheres. The typology
developed subsequently indicated that these two age groups were concentrated in
certain network/sociability types, both local and homophilic, but with very small and
very large networks, respectively.
Another classic attribute that was analyzed, was gender. Women’s sociability
tended to be more concentrated on the family and on churches, though no other dif­
ferences were found. However, when only working women and men were considered,
the networks of the former tended to be larger. Although adherence to specific religious
beliefs did not affect the networks, regular attendance of churches and temples tended
to diversify the person’s sociability, even when controlled for income and education.
Contrary to common sense, migration did not affect networks as an attribute
(although it did affect networks as a process), aside from the obvious result that there
tended to be more non-natives present in migrants’ networks. However, the close
observation of a small group of migrants with many fellow migrants in their networks
revealed some interesting results: they tended to have smaller and less varied networks.
In fact, these cases suggest the existence of real transplanted communities: for instance,
people who used to be neighbors in a tiny northeastern rural community may now be
neighbors in a São Paulo favela, although they perhaps migrated separately. This finding
is similar to what Jariego (2003) describes in relation to African and Latin-American
migrants in Spain.
The effect of residential segregation was also more complex than anticipated.
Segregation at the scale of the metropolis had no direct impact on network and
sociability characteristics. However, in segregated places some networks tended to
have lower localism and highly varied sociability, contributing to a reduction in the
effects of spatial isolation.
In summary, then, the effects of social attributes on networks are indirect and
combined, contributing to the presence of intense network heterogeneity. Hence, any
direct association between networks, attributes and poverty indicators tends to be
 URBAN POVERTY, SEGREGATION AND SOCIAL NETWORKS IN BRAZIL 1077

120
108.5

100

80 73.8 72.4
68.6 66.1 67.6

60
44.6 46.0

40 33.5

17.6
20
4.4 4.0 3.8 3.7 2.7
0
Large Large to medium Medium Medium to small Small

# Nodes % Local # Spheres

figure 2  Network types (source: author’s research interviews)

analytically very confused. I therefore decided to explore this heterogeneity in order

to get a better understanding of its regularities. Analysis of the data suggested that the
best strategy was to build two typologies using cluster analysis: one of the networks
themselves and another of sociability patterns by sociability sphere.
The cluster analysis of 19 network indicators resulted in five network types,
differing in size, sociability variability and localism.5 In general, both very large and
very small networks tended to be local, although with higher and smaller variability in
sociability, respectively. Mid-size networks, by contrast, tended to have low localism
and medium-level variability in sociability. The graph in Figure 2 displays the average
characteristics of each type.
However, network types only describe network characteristics, making it
necessary to capture individual sociability profiles. A second cluster analysis therefore
explored this dimension, based on the proportions of each sociability sphere found
in each network. The analysis resulted in six reasonably solid and meaningful groups,
with emphasis on: family (31%), neighborhood (34%), friendship (9%), church (8%),
work (14%) and associations (3%).6 Figure 3 illustrates the differences between groups,
showing the distribution of two sociability types concentrated on family and work,
respectively. As we can see, each type has a different predominant sphere: family (63%)
on the right-hand side and work (33%) on the left-hand side. In fact, family contains at
least 25% of the profiles in all types, similar to the situation described by studies of very
different cultural contexts, such as Grosseti (2007) on France, Bastani (2007) on Iran,
Fischer (2011) on the United States, and Lee et al. (2005) on China. Each type, however,
contains other spheres of predominance.
Among these types, three are concentrated in environments where relations
tend to be more homophilic and based on primary ties: family, neighborhood and
friends. The others, by contrast, are associated with environments in which individuals

5 These were: type 1––large––34 cases (8.6% in São Paulo and 10.5% in Salvador); type 2––from large to medium––69
cases (18.7% in São Paulo and 19.7% in Salvador); type 3––medium––105 cases (27.7% in São Paulo and 30.9% in
Salvador); type 4––medium to small––97 cases (30.2% in São Paulo and 22.3% in Salvador); type 5––small––56 cases
(14.8% in São Paulo and 16.4% in Salvador). One case was not classified owing to missing data.
6 These were: family––93 cases (25.4% in São Paulo and 26.3% in Salvador); neighborhood––86 cases (23.9%
in São Paulo and 23.7% in Salvador); friends––57 cases (14.8% in São Paulo and 17.1% in Salvador); church––48
cases (13.9% in São Paulo and 12.5% in Salvador); work––55 cases (15.3% in São Paulo and 15.1% in Salvador);
associations––22 cases (6.7% in São Paulo and 5.3% in Salvador). One case was not classified owing to missing data.
 MARQUES 1078

Sociability type: family

18%
Family
Neighborhood
19%
63% Others

Sociability type: work

16%
33% Work

Family
24% Neighborhood

Others
27%

figure 3  Sociability types for family and work compared (source: author’s research
interviews)

have a higher chance of meeting alters (other persons included in the respondents’
network) with attributes that differ from their own, including through church, work
and associations. These types constitute what I call organizational sociability with
potentially less homophily.
The combination of these classifications creates 30 possible permutations (5x6).
However, four relational situations account for 92% of cases. One of them––mid-size
networks with less local, more varied sociability and fewer homophilic contacts (church,
work and associations)––is of special interest to us since it tends to be less homophilic.7

— Networks and access to markets

The analysis unfolded into a series of quantitative analyses testing the importance
of networks and sociability on poverty indicators, in the presence of segregation and
traditional poverty variables such as migration, age, family structure, education, and so
on. I used regression analysis and CHAID techniques to test the associations with four
elements related to poverty conditions: unemployment, job tenure, social vulnerability
(using a composite indicator taking into account unemployment, very low income,
broken family structure and poor housing conditions) and income.

7 This type of network and sociability corresponded in 98 cases or 27%.

 URBAN POVERTY, SEGREGATION AND SOCIAL NETWORKS IN BRAZIL 1079

The first three conditions were tested as binary variables––employed/unem­

ployed, job tenure/not, socially vulnerable/not––using CHAID models.8 In the case of
being employed (47% of cases), the biggest association involved the type of sociability
constructed mainly in organizational environments, followed by the variability in
sociability for those with an organizational sociability.9 The result for tenured jobs (37%
of the employed) was similar and the strongest association was again with organizational
sociability.10 The results for social vulnerability (24% of cases) followed the same lines.
The most important variable was again the presence of organizational sociability,
which reduced vulnerability. However, among those with other sociability types, being
a migrant worsened the situation. Finally, among migrants, sociability centered on the
family reduced the presence of social vulnerability.11 In this case, migration worsened
the situation of people without organizational sociability, while family worked in the
opposite direction, protecting them.
A similar result was found in a multivariate analysis of income. The models
suggested that mid-sized, less local networks constructed mainly in organizational
environments, network size and the variety of sociability explained the individual’s per-
capita family income, albeit alongside traditional variables such as schooling, housing
density (with negative effect) and segregation (also with negative effect).12 Relational
variables therefore helped to explain social conditions once again. Segregation, in
particular, had a direct (and negative) effect on income, but a complex connection with
networks.
Poor people with less local, mid-sized networks that were focused on organi­
zational environments (which tend to be less homophilic) therefore had systematically
better living conditions. Hence, sociability and networks influence poverty and social
conditions, and social homophily appears as a key dimension with wide-ranging
consequences.

— Network mobilization
As remarked earlier, the structure of networks does not explain everything,
since different persons––or even the same person at different moments––may use
their networks in different ways (Blokland, 2003). Hence, the qualitative part of the
research showed that the day-to-day uses of networks are responsible for the provision
of a variety of basic goods and services. I asked interviewees in detail about how net­
work contacts are mobilized to solve everyday problems and to access goods and
services in situations such as migration, marriage, emotional support, tool lending, food,
appliances and money, building or repairing a house, taking care of children and the
elderly, looking for jobs, and obtaining information about and access to public services.
Material from the interviews suggested that practices and actions that mediate
access to markets and social support are influenced by a combination of the cost of
help, the amount of trust and the kind of reciprocity involved. Depending on these
associations, the exchange becomes more personalized and retribution for each

8 CHAID stands for Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detection, a technique for testing the associations between
one (dichotomous) variable of interest and a group of independent variables, by constructing a tree of explanation
based in the highest degrees of association.
9 Among those with this sociability, 62% were employed, compared to 39% among those without. In the second
branch of the tree, the probability of employment reached 81% for those with this sociability and these had more
than four different sociability spheres.
10 Among those with this kind of sociability, the probability of having a tenured job was 50%, against 30% among
those without.
11 Among those with organizational sociability, precariousness was 9% compared to 31% for those without. However,
for those without this sociability, but who were migrants, social vulnerability reached 37%. Migrants with no family
sociability lived in vulnerable conditions in 23% of cases, while those with other sociability types were vulnerable in
45% of cases.
12 The model explained the square root of per-capita family income and had an adjusted R2 of 0.414, with 353 cases.
Nine cases were excluded from the model either because they were outliers (7) or because of missing data (2). The
beta coefficients were: years of schooling 0.144; housing density −0.399; mid-sized, less local and organizational
networks 0.173; network size 0.302; varied sociability 0.09 and segregation −0.095.
 MARQUES 1080

favor involves distinct elements, often a mixture of prestige, affection, expectation of

retribution and money. The time spent and personal availability to provide help is
another significant dimension, along with the frequency and duration of the help.
Although not much wealth circulates in the world of the poor, the provision of high-
cost assistance is quite common for people with certain kinds of relational structures.
It is not always easy to differentiate market negotiations from exchanges
organized around social reciprocity. The only clear delimiting feature is the degree
of personalization involved in the exchange (Blokland, 2003). In market transactions,
the individuals involved might even know each other but other individuals may have
provided the purchase of the goods or service. In social exchanges, by contrast, the
transaction is personalized, even if it involves currency payments. Andreotti (2006), in
her study of the poor in Milan, correctly criticized romanticized visions of networks
of the poor, considering this ‘a sort of monetarization of social networks’. Although
an increase in market transactions can also be found among poor people in Brazil, the
presence of money may be only one of the dimensions involved in the exchange. If this
is not generalized, but specific and personalized by the ties of trust involved, then we
are dealing with an exchange organized around reciprocity. In this case, cash payments
form part of retributions that reduce the cost of the favor rendered, in addition to an
increase in prestige, affection or expectations of future assistance.
Considering these dimensions, different types of help can be identified for
specific forms of reciprocity, based on the increasing strength of the tie: (1) immediate,
low-trust and low-cost help; (2) constant, trust-based and costly help; (3) assistance in
which trust and intimacy are central. The provision of goods depends on these different
levels of trust and the strength of ties, especially where more costly forms of help are
involved. Since strong ties with high levels of trust tend to be rarer among the poorest
of the poor, network use involves strong causal circularities that persistently reproduce
durable inequalities.
Finally, I delimited a set of mechanisms that help shape networks, mediate their
use by individuals and influence their strategies and actions. The mechanisms explain
both network formation and network mobilization to solve everyday problems. Various
mechanisms show a circular and accumulative pattern, reproducing poverty situations
and inequalities. Given the space limitations here, I present only two examples of the
mechanisms that help explain the differences between poor and middle-class networks.
When poor and middle-class individuals are young, their networks tend to be
quite similar. This indicates that some mechanism begins to operate from this point
onward. I refer here to the distinct transition from school life to the workplace, and
especially the existence of a transition toward professional networks in the case of the
middle classes and the elite.
Until adulthood, school is one of the forums for the transition of all individuals
from certain types of primary and local spheres (family, the neighborhood, friends) to
less local and more secondary types (church, workplace, unions, associations). The
school itself reflects this dimension, since secondary schools tend to be much less
homophilic (and less geographically local) than primary schools. Thus, youngsters
gradually develop the attributes of the adult world while acquiring the network patterns
that go with it. For the middle class, this occurs in slow, parallel fashion. For the poor,
by contrast, educational careers are briefer and overlap with events such as teenage
pregnancy, early entrance into the job market or early marriage.
The crux of the issue is that university environments rarely feature as spaces
of gradual relational preparation for the professional world among the poor. It is on
the university campus that the middle class starts forming its professional networks,
creating a slow relational transition toward a specialized job market. Individuals living
in poverty, even if they do finish high school, face considerable relational discontinuity
when they emerge into the job market, since their schoolmates will be dispersed across
 URBAN POVERTY, SEGREGATION AND SOCIAL NETWORKS IN BRAZIL 1081

a far broader spectrum of occupations. For them, socialization for the world of work
occurs in practice without the (lengthy) mediation of a university environment in which
relationships can be forged. Nothing could be farther removed from the world of Mark
Granovetter’s job-seekers––middle-class individuals with college degrees searching for
highly skilled jobs in specialized labor markets (Granovetter, 1973).
However, another large-scale mechanism is superposed on this: I call it the
economy of ties, and it concerns the economic, emotional and temporal costs and
personal efforts that go into creating and, particularly, into maintaining ties: keeping
contact, making visits, doing things together, and so forth. Apparently certain
individuals find it much more difficult to bear these costs and, therefore, experience
far greater limitations to building and, especially, maintaining ties. As a result, whole
portions of the networks of the poor are abandoned periodically, slipping into a period
of latency, only for the individual to find, later on, that they cannot be reactivated.
This mechanism operates constantly, and it regularly leads to the loss of part of the
individual’s relational structure, impoverishing him or her in terms of the spectrum of
sociability contained therein.
The aggregate effect of these mechanisms is that middle-class networks are
larger and richer in terms of sociability and represent an overlapping of networks from
various periods of life and different spheres.

Conclusion
In summary, sociability in general, and social networks in particular, are deci­
sive factors in poverty situations. This article suggests that they help explain social
differences between social groups and are key elements in the reproduction of social
inequalities, mediating an individual’s access to the different sources of welfare. A
substantial part of poverty reproduction is located at mid-level scales, between the
macroprocesses and the micro decisions and behaviors investigated by many authors.
Although these ideas have been discussed since Wilson (1987), the question of how they
matter is still under debate.
Certain kinds of networks and sociability, in particular those involving less
homophilic contacts, are systematically associated with better social conditions.
Localism and certain spheres of sociability tend to increase homophily, while others tend
to reduce it, creating the conditions for broader social integration. The mobilization of
social contacts to solve daily problems among the poor depends on the strength of trust
and ties, as already suggested by some of the literature on social support, although the
most costly forms of help tend to be less available to the very poor.
All these effects of sociability are parallel to and intertwined with the effects of
residential segregation, although each of these produces independent effects on poverty,
in contrast to what is suggested by normative understandings of the relationships
between social capital and networks. So although networks may counterbalance the
effects of social isolation produced by residential segregation, these two mid-level
structures can also reinforce each other, contributing to the reproduction of poverty
and social inequalities over the long term.

Eduardo Marques, Center for Metropolitan Studies and Department of Political

Science, University of São Paulo, Av. Luciano Gualberto, 315, Cidade Universitária,
São Paulo, Brazil, ecmarq@uol.com.br; ecmarq@usp.br

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