Editors: Raúl Acosta, Flávio Eiró, Insa Koch and Martijn Koster

Across the globe, urban growth continues unabated. This is so despite high levels of inequality, poverty and forms of exclusion that are part and parcel of city life for the many. In response to these challenges, governments have attempted to present solutions that are too often palliative, addressing merely the symptoms of inequalities rather than their causes. Sometimes, such responses reinforce the social exclusion of the most marginalized, including mass evictions, the rise of gated communities, the securitization of urban spaces, shifts towards austerity measures, punitive policies of migrant populations, and the regulation of the informal sector. This collection of papers addresses both the various forms of resistance to, and the reproduction of, exclusionary urban policies. In this feature, we understand the study of urban struggles as a collection of productive tensions where governance, resistance and solidarity play out in plural and often unexpected ways within global frameworks of highly unequal regimes of accumulation. Through ethnographic studies, with a focus on the lived experiences of urban dwellers, we capture both the moments of solidarity that continue to exist and the wider forces that disable such moments.