May 23, 2024

Law, Justice, and Citizenship in the Twenty First Century

João Pedroso e Wanda Capeller

Urban regeneration is a new holistic policy approach, through an integrated intervention covering physical, social, economic, and environmental aspects. However, it is a complex and multifaceted socio-economic phenomenon, within the framework of public-private partnerships, which integrate contributions from multiple areas and disciplines, and technical-operational constraints.

This research analyses the emancipatory potential of urban regeneration, with the aim of rethinking the modes of intervention in the city. A process of social emancipation is considered to establish new relationships between individuals, society, and the State in situations of authoritarianism, discrimination, or exclusion. The undertaken socio-legal action-research specifically interrogates the practice of the URBiNAT project, and processes of urban regeneration in general. Questions arise as to the potential for social transformation of innovative interventions aimed at the inclusion of territories in a context of urban relegation. The unit of analysis encompasses a participatory process to co-create an intervention in the urban public space from nature-based solutions. It analyses the co-creation arena, where beneficiaries and stakeholders participate, and its backstage that integrates the promoters of the intervention.

A participant observation was undertaken with significant reflexivity. The secondary analysis method was also used through content analysis applied to interview transcripts. The demonstration of the emancipatory potential is based on four hypotheses: (re)construction of citizenship in the city; legal consciousness between latencies and emergences; empowerment of beneficiaries, stakeholders, and promoters; emancipatory action and investigation.

As a result, twelve conclusions constitute guidelines for an emancipatory model of urban regeneration. They come from the empirical evidence of latencies, emergences, and resistances in the construction of law in the city, and from the characterization of action and research in the broader context of urban regeneration. They follow an emancipatory line that stems from the socio-legal approach taken, that is, a critical sociology of legal mobilisation, considering the appropriation of law in its social construction, in the city, and as to citizenship.

It is concluded that the legal mobilisation in urban regeneration is substantially based on communication and interaction between actors involved. Inclusive urban regeneration is conceptualized as a transformative process for all of them, aiming at inclusive life, political and economic alternatives, and innovative practices of action and research. Such transformations affect power relations, their intrinsic tensions, various types, and modalities of exercise. Faced with limitations and challenges, regarding the complexity of urban regeneration partnerships, it is necessary to integrate, in the means and ends of the participatory process, practices of reflexivity and critical analysis that contribute to developing ethical and political capacities to listen, create solid and solidary relationships, and joint understandings.

It is also concluded that citizenship can be activated within the scope of a collective sociocultural force, whose empowerment and development do not only concern beneficiaries of urban intervention, including stakeholders and promoters with ends and means to adopt emancipatory positions and provisions. As demonstrated, it is necessary to integrate the socio-legal perspective in an urban regeneration aspiring to emancipation, to mobilize, grasp, develop and concretize law. This demonstration expresses the social construction of a life of dignity for all in the city, as a living law that translates into substantive and full citizenship. It is conceptualized that the constituent power of citizenship is expressed in the communication and interrelations established by action and research in the city, as a craft of practices that creatively participates in the reinvention of social emancipation, by composing the socio-political-cultural fabric of citizenship. In this sense, professionals and researchers need to develop mediation and intercultural skills.

At the same time, a new conception of law as constitutive cultural knowledge of social identity, relationships and struggles is corroborated, which integrates the epistemological rupture regarding the perception of law sustained in the sociology of law, so that it is also grasped in terms of expectations, aspirations, and claims, and not only as to the order it should produce. This research aims to be a contribution to make visible less-explored socio-legal dimensions, and to deepen the application of legal consciousness studies. It is expected that the analytical model developed here, around action of mobilisation, empowerment, legal consciousness, and social construction, can be explored in other interdisciplinary and intersectoral investigative contexts.

Keywords: urban regeneration; citizenship; empowerment; legal consciousness; emancipation