Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how beneficiaries of state-subsidised housing in South Africa have altered their house, via formal and informal extensions, and consequences for access to infrastructure and services in terms of citizenship identity and practice.

Paper long abstract:

South Africa's post-apartheid government has prioritised the provision of housing and services as a major part of its anti-poverty agenda and as the physical means to overcome past injustices. Over the past two decades, approximately 3 million fully-serviced brick-built houses have been constructed and their ownership awarded to low-income urban dwellers. Based on 15 years of longitudinal research in a single state-subsidised housing settlement in Cape Town, South Africa, this research highlights the ways in which citizens have implemented 'DIY urbanism' in the 15 years since occupation, ranging from grandiose two-storey extensions to the proliferation of informal 'shacks' as well as cases of severe neglect, and the implications for accessing services. This citizen-led infrastructural change is juxtaposed against the state's normative expectations of how 'good' citizens are expected to use the houses they receive from the state (ie. exclusively for residency with prescribed options for formal single-storey extensions), as well as media-driven accounts of the widespread informalisation of subsidised housing settlements. The paper develops the concept of infrastructural citizenship to highlight the physical and material role of infrastructure as a crucial mediator in state-citizen relations, as well as in citizens' perceptions of identity. While there has been renewed scholarly interest in both citizenship and infrastructure, particularly within political and urban geography respectively, the relationship between citizenship and infrastructure is under-theorised, particularly from the everyday perspective of citizens.