Paper short abstract:

I investigate the phenomenon called 'urban informality' (both theoretical and physical dimensions) in Global South. Looking at cases of squatter/slum settlements and refugee displacements, I draw focus on their production rather than their presence, to confront urban tools and dynamics of power.

Paper long abstract:

My research situates itself between the concerns of decolonial thinkers at large and Post-Development approaches towards knowledge production pertaining to urban practice and urban imaginaries. Where coloniality and development overlap, complex and nuanced power structures emerge. As seen in regions framed as developing/underdeveloped, a detrimental outcome of these power structures has been the predisposed sources of knowledge.

Following an emergent paradigm in theorizing development from Southern perspectives, I wish to discuss the urban manifestations of internalized colonization and power embedded within the dynamics of urban otherness and exclusion of, and in, the Post-Development Global South. Through studying the displaceability of informal settlements and refugee camps, I would like to questions the epistemics and construction of otherness and threat as a by-product of the colonial lens. I question the enigma of the informal as the unplanned and uncontrolled. This leads us to two interesting questions - is the informal unplanned because the invader, ruler or technocratic planner did not decide how it will be planned or is it un-plannable because the vocabulary of the dominant urban theory and logics of how to live the 'right' way does not explain this way of being?!