Paper short abstract:

The article positions the interplay between deterritorialization of the migrants and host communities and the re-territorialization of the protective agency referred to as the “new power”

Paper long abstract:

ABSTRACT

The political class in preparation for a 21st century urban city in the global south appropriate land for infrastructure developments. Yet a deeper interrogation shows an act of absolute deterritorialization, were a political force or agency end the existence of social relation, cultural enclaves, economic formation and context of migrants by demolishing, annihilating and mutating migrants’ settlements to constitute a new territory which totally excludes the migrants, which is the process of reterritorialization. This action brings about, conflict and displacements with attending pushbacks from the host community. Deleuze and Guattari’s theory was used to provide an interpretative framework which relates the concept to the exploitative and dispossessive manifestations evidential in Tarkwabay Pennisula. This article argues that land appropriation worsens migrants’ marginalization, while enhancing economic dominance and deprivations by the Nigerian Navy and other arms of government. The Tarkwabay Pennisula case study in Lagos reveals an underline motive of land appropriation, which is to displace migrants from their clustered environment because they sit on economically choicy land in the peninsula. This article examined how land appropriation deterritorialize migrants and host communities in the Tarkwabay Pennisula. This action raises important theoretical questions for displacement and land governance in re-imagining urban futures.

Keywords: Displacement, Governance, Land Appropriation, Land rights, Migration, Lagos