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Paper short abstract:

The notion of marginality is applied to Global South metropoles at the core of neoliberal restructuration of urban space. The paper presents a working-class quarter in Sudan capital Khartoum. Fieldwork shows the need of seizing marginality from spatial to socio-cultural and political perspectives

Paper long abstract:

In Greater Khartoum a booming expansion in recent years (and the flow of IDPs, refugees, environmental migrants) brings the marks of a harsh differentiation due to neoliberal policies, repression and exclusion dynamics. Rather than on the multiple spatially marginal places where « new-comers » are confined, the paper focuses on a central quarter of the capital, Deim, whose particular history and social composition invite to rethink the notion of marginality. Qualified as a multi-ethnic quarter, Deim was created during British colonization by the planned resettlement of slums (mainly inhabited by ancient military slaves from different Sudanese regions) and became progressively the bulk of an early local working-class. This original location at the margins of the city changed drastically with the recent expansion of urban limits. Today, under pressures of gentrification, the inhabitants of Deim, while striving to keep their entitlement to land (suddenly attractive for new urban middle-classes for its spatial centrality), keep as a marker of their collective memory their former marginal location and the common experience of early displacement, refuse their marginalization as a "mixed" community in the stigmatization by the Arabic Islamic elite, and still claim their "centrality" as working-class and highly politicized neighbourhood where a national Sudanese identity has been built against exclusive tribal, ethnic and religious divides dominating in other contexts of the country. Based on a long fieldwork (2008-2015) the paper illustrate a particular configuration of "marginal" urban groups and propose to seize « marginality » from spatial to socio-cultural, historical and political perspective.