Informality and the State: Landslides in Latin America’s Urban Peripheries

My dissertation research seeks to develop a theory of citizen-state engagement in the context of Latin America’s urban informal settlements and how they engage with the state in the context of landslides and other environmental crises. I seek to understand the drivers of variation in how cities pursue policies surrounding environmental vulnerability as well as how civil society groups make demands on the state in response. With the generous support of the Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation, I will be conducting dissertation fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to conduct interviews of citizen and bureaucratic actors.