Begging and Structural Injustice in the Global South

Brazil and Mozambique in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This article analyzes begging as a persistent social phenomenon in societies of the Global South, understanding it not as an individual or contingent circumstance, but as an expression of historically produced structural injustices. Adopting a qualitative and comparative approach, the analysis examines the urban contexts of São Paulo, Brazil, and Beira, Mozambique, drawing on bibliographic review, documentary analysis, and institutional data from both countries. The research problem consists of understanding how historical processes of exclusion, associated with the colonial legacy and contemporary dynamics of peripheral capitalism, shape the production and management of begging in these urban spaces. The central argument sustains that begging is embedded in the political and economic rationalities that operate through the coloniality of power and necropolitics, producing hierarchies of humanity and exposing specific groups to extreme precariousness and institutional abandonment. The comparison between Brazil and Mozambique reveals structural convergences related to exclusionary urbanization, the racialization of poverty, and the fragility of state responses to extreme poverty, as well as contextual specificities in the ways social exclusion is administered. It is concluded that the persistence of begging exposes the profound limits of prevailing development models and contemporary strategies for addressing urban poverty in the Global South, calling for a critical reading that goes beyond assistentialist or moralizing approaches.