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- Convenors:
-
Marie Bridonneau
(Université Paris Nanterre)
Amandine Spire (UMR CESSMA University Paris Diderot)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- RH0S1
- Start time:
- 30 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel focuses on the analysis of forced relocation regarding their links with the making of the urban political space. We would like to raise these issues by paying attention to the reinvention of daily practices by relocated urban dwellers to underline the evolution of preexisting orders.
Long Abstract:
This panel focuses on the analysis of relocation (following forced displacements) regarding their links with the making of the urban political space. The practice of urban displacements in African cities is not a new phenomenon. However, the current relocation processes reflect some original patterns for examining the way of negotiating a renewed 'soft constraint' (supposed to be part of a new socio-spatial order) in the frame of urban modernization policies. We offer to gather diverse analyses of these urban policies focusing after the displacement in order to explore peripheral resettlement sites produced by the articulation of different stakeholders involved in urban government. We consider the relocation as a particular situation testing urban norms, generating certain adjustments of practices and conducts between urban authorities and city dwellers. These mutual adjustments lead to the emergence of new socio-spatial layouts redefining the edges of the right to the city. We suggest considering the right to the city as the result of the broad processes of the stabilization of urban norms. It renews the debate: what becomes stabilised and standardised in the period following displacement and what is contested? How do these peripheral relocation sites turn into the confrontation of displaced city dwellers' experiences with dispossessed rural dwellers' ones? How are the categories of rights to remain (or not) in the city created? We would like to raise these issues by paying attention to the reinvention of daily practices by relocated urban dwellers in order to underline the evolution of preexisting orders.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Raffael Beier (TU Dortmund University)
Paper short abstract:
In recent years, large-scale housing programmes have been on the rise again. To avoid past mistakes of social housing, small-scale private construction, as practiced in Casablanca’s slum resettlement projects, could be an alternative. However, divergent policy interests risk the success.
Paper long abstract:
Authors such as Buckley et al. (2016) have warned that the recent rise of large-scale housing programmes, aiming to solve the problem of affordable housing, will rather profit the middle classes and may reproduce problematic aspects of earlier social housing programmes and resettlement. Inadequate housing locations, people's deprivation from sources of income, and increased living costs may be the most prominent ones among them. In Casablanca, Morocco, authorities are practicing an innovative approach, facilitating shantytown resettlement through land subsidies and investment of small-scale private constructors. The programme could be successful in avoiding some of the above-mentioned problems. The specific modalities have enabled even most vulnerable families to move from their shacks into new, more comfortable flats. However, more could have been reached if there were no conflictual political interest. Urban modernisation plans, security policies and profit interest in land were the main drivers behind the prohibition of in-situ solutions. Instead people were forced to move to the urban peripheries. Although many households appreciate the increase of living comfort and the fact that they have become owners of a formal apartment, they also report a feeling of isolation, a loss of job opportunities, higher transport costs and a lack of public services. The split results underline the heterogeneity within the judgement of resettled households and call for an abandonment of single-solution-strategies. The paper builds on four months of field research in Casablanca. It uses own empirical household data and draws from participatory observation as well as qualitative interviews.
Corentin Chanet (ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles))
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on a case of resettlement that occurred 20 years ago in New Atuabo, an area built by a mining company on the outskirt of Tarkwa (Ghana), this paper focuses on socioeconomic differentiation, including its relation to the politics of everyday life.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on a case of resettlement that occurred 20 years ago in New Atuabo, an area built by a mining company on the outskirts of Tarkwa (Ghana), this paper shows how resettlement not only reshapes the urban political space, but also constitutes a quasi-experimental case of social differentiation along several boundaries that go beyond classic dichotomies such as rural/urban, especially since the original settlement (Old Atuabo) could also be considered in many respect as « urban ». From this perspective, the « political » is but one aspect that needs to be taken into account if the resettlement is to be understood as a multifaceted process.
I argue that while the beginning of the resettlement process was constrained and enforced by major political authorities, the development of the area now rests on more fundamental - yet blatant - dynamics of socioeconomic differentiation, involving a wider variety of actors, behaviors and conflictual relations that inform the politics of everyday life.
Among these dynamics, I will focus on 1) The progressive becoming of New Atuabo into a fast-developing « real estate » market that generates unequal opportunities 2) The (over)use of some urban infrastructure such as roads and the electrical grid, and 3) The competitiveness and relative (in)stability between streams of revenues. Depending on their social trajectories, which are tied to past events, access to different forms of capital and more or less strategic dispositions, people face unequal chances to succeed in this new suburb.
Amandine Spire (UMR CESSMA University Paris Diderot)
Paper short abstract:
Cette communication porte sur la situation du replacement, considérée dans un temps ordinaire (et non le moment des luttes et des mobilisations) pour questionner la formation de normes et les dispositifs de contrainte dans une dynamique d’ajustements réciproques entre citadins et autorités urbaines.
Paper long abstract:
Cette communication propose d'explorer les modalités de réinstallation de citadins ayant été ciblés par des mobilités résidentielles imposées par la modernisation et la réalisation de grands projets urbains à Lomé. Depuis 2009, la capitale du Togo est l'objet de nouvelles coopérations économiques suite à la levée de sanctions liées au « déficit démocratique ». Cette étape d'ouverture est marquée par une mise en chantier de la capitale (investissements dans les infrastructures) et de transformation des normes institutionnelles et politiques.
Dans ce contexte, les modalités de mise en œuvre du projet du Grand Contournement de Lomé permettent d'explorer de nouvelles relations entre les pratiques de pouvoir de l'Etat et les citadins. Les modalités d'action de l'Etat dans le cadre de cette opération emblématique constituent un enjeu qui va au-delà des projets puisqu'il s'agit alors de mettre en visibilité l'amorce de nouvelles pratiques de gouvernement : faire accepter le projet de modernisation, remettre en ordre les usages de l'espace, instiller un mode de « bonne conduite », être à la « bonne place »… Comment analyser les formes de contrôle et de pouvoir exercées à la fois par l'Etat et les citadins dans le site de réinstallation ?
La communication propose de cibler l'analyse sur les modalités d'acceptation de la relocalisation et l'instauration de règles de conduites (sociales et spatiales) à travers l'étude des pratiques ordinaires prenant place dans la situation de replacement quelques années après la réinstallation.