Alberto Fierro

This project launched the Centro Popular de Pesquisa (CPP) within Brazil’s Homeless Workers’ Movement. The CPP was established around a decolonial principle; at least half of its members are residents of informal settlements, thus ensuring that researchers are directly affected by housing struggles. This approach challenges traditional academic methods by recognizing working people as political and intellectual subjects, capable of producing knowledge about the systems of oppression they face. Over the course of 12 months the project developed a collective research process grounded in trust, training, and intellectual conversations. Members collectively defined the central research question – “who are the homeless workers?” – and designed a questionnaire they used to conduct fieldwork in informal settlements. The research combined survey with ethnography, immersive exchanges, thematic training and collective reflection, which produced rigorous knowledge production that was accessible to grassroots communities. Beyond generating data on the realities of housing insecurity, the project strengthened group cohesion, deepened empathy, and advanced methodologies of militant and participatory research. It demonstrated that research could serve both as a tool for political struggle and as a means of empowerment, creating knowledge that directly supports the struggle against inequalities.