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In developing countries, people living in informal settlements are subjected to different forms of coercive control such as threats of evictions, exclusion, blocked access to urban services and other types of structural violence. These coercive measures are legitimised through the discursive branding of informal settlements as ‘unplanned’, ‘disorderly’ and ‘dangerous’ neighbourhoods. This paper examines how people living in these denigrated neighbourhoods engage with and resist this territorial stigmatisation. It uses data from key informant interviews (KIIs) with urban elites, in-depth interviews (IDIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs) with residents of Harare’s informal settlements. Our analysis reveals that while some informal settlement residents have internalised stigmatising discourses, others resist them through constructing counternarratives that seek to portray their settlements as ‘good places for the urban poor’, thereby creating a positive image of their neighbourhoods in the context of extreme spatial and socio-economic marginalisation. These place-based narratives are rooted in the shared experiences with informality and associational life in a city where such residents are needed yet unwanted. We conclude that while informal settlement residents are aware of their precarity and tenure insecurities, these counternarratives build strong solidarities to resist state-sponsored evictions, arbitrary relocations and other forms of structural violence.

PurposeThis paper examines how one group of frontline health workers (nurses) amid coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic perceive the Government of Ghana (GOG)'s decision to ease the lockdown restrictions when cases were increasing. This paper contributes to the literature on Igor Grossman's concept of wise reasoning and its applicability to COVID-19 management decision-making by political leaders.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employed an exploratory qualitative design. The decision to adopt qualitative method is linked to the paucity of research on wise reasoning, political leadership and COVID-19. The paper draws on qualitative online survey with 42 nurses located in Accra Metropolis, Ghana.FindingsThe paper demonstrates that a confluence of research participants perceived the government's act of easing the lockdown restrictions to be in bad faith on account of (1) nonrecognition of different perspectives and viewpoints from stakeholders and interest groups; (2) rising number of cases which naturally make the decision to lift the restriction unwise; (3) concerns about the prioritization of peripheral issues over citizens' health and (4) concerns about limited and robust health facilities and their implications.Research limitations/implicationsThe key claims must be assessed against the limitations of the study. First, the study is an exploratory study and, therefore, not intended for a generalization purpose. Second, the research participants are highly educated, and the responses in this study are skewed toward them.Originality/valueThe paper is novel in seeking to explore wise reasoning and political leadership during a global pandemic such as COVID-19. This exploratory study demonstrates that COVID-19, though devastating and causing havoc, presents an opportunity to test Igor Grossmann's wise reasoning framework about decision-making by political leaders. This extends the literature on wise reasoning beyond the discipline of psychology (the fact that all the authors are geographers) and Global North to Global South since the data for this study are gathered in Ghana.

Drawing on semi-structured in-depth interviews with Romanian immigrants in Ontario, Canada, conducted between 2014 and 2018, this article explores how the experiences acquired by the Romanian immigrants through migration and multicultural intercourse facilitate the development of personal wisdom. We show how our research participants perceived these geographical processes of migration and place-based multiethnic cohabitation to account for their growing wiser than their earlier selves. Specifically, we organize the description of these perceptions into three interrelated themes: (1) changes in perspective, (2) the learning of new things, and (3) the role of place in fostering wisdom. Against this background, the article also highlights the boundary conditions within which these processes may or may not foster the development of wisdom, acknowledging that not all migratory and multicultural experiences lead to prosocial and adaptive outcomes. Our discussion of these boundary conditions with the research participants coalesced into five recurrent themes: (1) adaptation to the new environment and social system, (2) the role of the host environment as a boundary condition, (3) the problem of unmet expectations, (4) the magnitude of the cultural shocks, and (5) the language barrier. Bearing the complex politics of these boundary conditions in mind, we argue that the experience of international migration and subsequent cross-cultural interaction can be usefully understood as a ‘fertile ground’ for the flourishing of personal wisdom, which itself can act as an individual and collective resource for cohabitation in multicultural settings.

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