“A Good Place for the Poor!” Counternarratives to Territorial Stigmatisation from Two Informal Settlements in Dhaka

Abstract

<p>With many cities in the Global South experiencing immense growth in informal settlements, city authorities frequently try to assert control over these settlements and their inhabitants through coercive measures such as threats of eviction, exclusion, blocked access to services and other forms of structural violence. Such coercive control is legitimized through the discursive formation of informal settlements as criminal and unsanitary, and of the residents as migrants and as temporary and illegitimate settlers. Using findings from ethnographic research carried out in two informal settlements in Dhaka, Bangladesh, this article explores how informal settlement residents engage with and resist territorial stigma in a rapidly growing Southern megacity. Findings show residents resist stigmatising narratives of neighbourhood blame by constructing counternarratives that frame informal settlements as a “good place for the poor.” These place-based narratives emerge from shared experiences of informality and associational life in a city where such populations are needed yet unwanted. While residents of these neighbourhoods are acutely aware of the temporariness and illegality of unauthorised settlements, these narratives produce solidarities to resist eviction and serve to legitimise their claim to the city.</p>

The Politics of Space and Everyday Surveillance in a Delhi Homelessness Shelter: An Ethnographic Exploration

“…In the United States and beyond, contemporary scholars have also theorized territoriality and spatial stigma in varied urban contexts (Fattah & Walters 2020;Ganguly, 2016;Kornberg, 2016). Kornberg (2016), for example, reveals how territorial stigmatization maps onto the politics of water and infrastructural crisis in Flint, Michigan.…”

“…Kornberg (2016), for example, reveals how territorial stigmatization maps onto the politics of water and infrastructural crisis in Flint, Michigan. In the Global South, Fattah and Walters (2020) extend the concept of territorial stigmatization to two "denigrated" urban neighborhoods in Dhaka, Bangladesh where residents engage in acts of resistance to reject internalized spatial stigmatization. Similarly, Ganguly (2016) examines the socio-spatial stigma associated with caste-based spatially segregated residential spaces, wherein members of the lower-caste urban poor are policed and criminalized.…”

“…These forms of surveillance reflect dehumanizing scripts that amount to "danger" and "unworthiness" spoke further with him, reassuring him that I had not come to expose the shelter in a negative light. (Amster, 2003(Amster, , 2008Davis, 2006;Fattah & Walters, 2020;Ganguly, 2016;Monahan, 2017;Tate, 2016). Like Samrat, Roop expressed a similar awareness.…”

“…The "spatial taint" and degradation of the community is inextricably tied to the way in which its residents experience surveillance of their basic acts of survival; these are visible because of the abject poverty in which the community lives. However, at the same time, shelter residents are not deemed worthy or deserving of social visibility, with their humanity having become invisible (Amster, 2003(Amster, , 2004Davis, 2006;Doherty et al, 2008;Fattah & Walters, 2020;Smets & Kusenbach, 2020;Tate, 2016;Wacquant, 2007;Wacquant et al, 2014). Their very existence is deemed offensive, and consistent with global scholarship on homelessness, the community is constructed as a "problem" in need of a solution (Amster, 2003(Amster, , 2004Bhan, 2009Bhan, , 2019Doherty et al, 2008;Dupont, 2011;Ghertner, 2010;Miraftab & Kudva, 2015;Rao, 2013;Tate, 2016).…”

Limits to and opportunities for scaling participation: lessons from three city-wide urban poor networks in Dhaka, Bangladesh

“…In DNCC, for example, one MP had a settlement named after them, and various relatives involved in political mediation in the area. See also Banks et al (2011); Fattah and Walters (2020); Lata (2020); Banks (2008, 2015); Hackenbroch and Hossain (2012, 2013); Ahmed and Johnson (2014).…”