This article theorises a multi-year participatory action research engagement focusing on young land occupations and consolidated favelas in São Paulo’s south periphery, providing an arsenal of tools for activist-scholars. Building on Paulo Freire's legacy, we call on academia to embrace activist co-production, learn from and support informal dwellers’ everyday urbanisms, and join social movements’ struggles for social transformation. We advance three modalities of action: awareness raising through emancipatory education and capacity building; articulatção through knowledge exchange between young and consolidated informal communities; and advocacy through policy reform for the right to occupy, hold ground, and upgrade.
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