Fronteiras urbanas, fronteiras de mercado: espaços em disputa na periferia paulista

Based on ethnographic research carried out on the outskirts of São Paulo, the article proposes to identify the actors and power games inscribed in the arrangements surrounding the formation of urban occupations that take place amidst an intricate web of interests involved in the urban expansion of land and housing markets. Contrary to what is often assumed, the installation of an occupation involves arrangements, negotiations and disputes between the most different actors, which take place in the gray zone that blurs the boundaries of formal-informal, legal-illegal. It is a city-making that takes place in these forms of managing the precariousness and urgencies of life, transformed into business opportunities and power resources. It is in this key that the logic of markets can be understood, triggering the expansion of urban borders.