Paper short abstract:

The paper examines how urban resettlement projects in Zimbabwe, seemingly aimed at countering mass physical and symbolic dislocations, overlay and often deepen patterns of systemic marginalisation, simultaneously unsettling complex distinctions and articulations between personhood and citizenship.

Paper long abstract:

In an era of particularly intense urban displacement in post-2000 Zimbabwe, often-violent state-generated mass physical and symbolic dislocations have been followed by a few highly limited official urban resettlement projects. The language of 'care' or compensation attached to such projects has been a thinly masked attempt by the state to legitimise its displacement practices. At the same time, they have offered some displaced urban residents interesting if ambiguous opportunities for gaining access to property and hence (apparent) access to previously unattainable forms of legality and/or security. This in itself has altered relationships to personhood (a sense of being) and to citizenship (a sense of right) in different ways. Yet the conditions of these resettlement projects overlay and in some cases deepen pre-existing patterns of systemic marginalisation, or produce new dynamics of differentiation, simultaneously unsettling complex distinctions, and articulations, between personhood and citizenship. The paper draws specifically on ethnographic research conducted in various urban resettlement sites in and around Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, over the period 2012 - 2016.