Paper short abstract:

This paper centres on the ambivalence of the ongoing eviction/resettlement of an informal settlement in central Dakar as experienced by its inhabitants. Engaging with ideas of urban ‘beauty’ and renewal, it contributes to arguments that dispossession can coexist with inclusion and redistribution.

Paper long abstract:

Taïba, a small informal settlement in central Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is undergoing an ongoing eviction/resettlement process through which its inhabitants have been promised either social housing on the outskirts of the city or financial compensation. The land was initially given to people to live on in the mid-twentieth century by an indigenous Lebu leader during early waves of urbanisation and has been inhabited ever since. Now that it has been sold to developers, people living there are experiencing a protracted period of uncertainty as the move continues to be delayed.

This paper centres on the ambivalence of the move for Taïba’s inhabitants. On the one hand, people lay claim to the place where they were born, grew up and continue to live with their families and conduct their livelihoods. At the same time, with the recent promise of social housing many are impatient to move, a sentiment accompanied by a sense that a place like Taïba no longer has its place in the heart of Dakar (xolu Dakar bi). Attending to the ambivalence of the move, this paper engages with scholarship on urban renewal that emphasises the notion of ‘beauty as control’ (Harms 2012) and, in doing do, contributes to recent research highlighting that dispossession can coexist with inclusion and redistribution (Di Nunzio 2022). Taïba was the site of my doctoral research (2017-18), and this paper draws on shorter periods of fieldwork since during which plans for the eviction have been ongoing.