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.