Forging a new middle class in emerging democracies

Abstract

The article details the production of a narrative about the New Middle Class (NMC) that is recently articulated in academic articles (see among others Neri 2016) and promotes a perspective disseminated by the World Bank, OECD, and The Economist. This narrative also supports governmental strategy to fight poverty. Fighting poverty has been on the Brazilian political agenda since the democratisation process began. However, there are different strategies to deal with this situation, one of which is specified in the Federal Constitution in terms of universal social rights for citizens' status. The other is based on increasing the consumption power of the poor and is identified by the label of the NMC policies. Each of them has different consequences in terms of subjectivity and sociability. © 2017 Mattersburger Kreis fur Entwicklungspolitik. All rights reserved.