Evictions: Reconceptualizing Housing Insecurity from the Global South

Abstract

Urban sociologists have recently discovered the problem of residential evictions. Although displacement has been a major theme in sociological studies of gentrification, homelessness, and public housing transformation, the forced removal of tenants from rental housing been the subject of surprisingly little sociological research (Desmond 2012a;Hartman and Robinson 2003). With the new visibility that Matthew Desmond has brought to the topic with his award-winning ethnography Evicted and the rigorously researched articles he and his colleagues have produced, evictions have begun to attract more scholarly attention (

Displacement through development? Property turnover and eviction risk in Seattle

“…Eviction in the Global South is often identified with the widespread and systematic spatial displacement of populations, frequently targeting entire areas of peri-urban or informal habitation via slum clearance (Alvarez and Cardenas, 2019;Bhan, 2009;Brickell et al, 2017). These cases reveal evictions to be inherently political and collective events, countering dominant understandings of evictions as apolitical products of individual household failings (Purser, 2016;Weinstein, 2021). Although evictions in Global North cities are often less visible, they are similarly linked with systems of inequality and dispossession through private housing markets and state enforcement regimes.…”

Spatial Concentration and Spillover: Eviction Dynamics in Neighborhoods of Los Angeles, California, 2005–2015

“…Studies analyzing court-based evictions, however, reveal that these evictions are more common in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poor and minority, particularly Black, renters (Desmond, 2012b;Lens et al, 2020;Medina, Byrne, Brewer, & Nicolosi, 2020). Whereas the literature on evictions in the United States tends to conflate distinct types of eviction within a single concept (see Weinstein, 2020), our hypotheses explicitly test the proposition that different mechanisms drive different types of eviction.…”

Urban Displacement and Trade in a Senegalese Market

“…For example, slum evictions in the Global South have been occurring with greater frequency and aggressiveness since the early 2000s. This has been largely attributed to cities' growing efforts to become 'world class' by seeking to attract investment, promote development and improve their global competitive position (Weinstein 2021). The scholarship on evictions, expulsions and dispossessions generally situates these practices in the context of capital accumulation under conditions of neoliberal globalisation (Weinstein 2021; see also Hart 2006;Sassen 2014).…”

“…This has been largely attributed to cities' growing efforts to become 'world class' by seeking to attract investment, promote development and improve their global competitive position (Weinstein 2021). The scholarship on evictions, expulsions and dispossessions generally situates these practices in the context of capital accumulation under conditions of neoliberal globalisation (Weinstein 2021; see also Hart 2006;Sassen 2014). In Dakar and in other cities all around the world, including those in the Global North, eviction, dispossession, demolition and displacement go hand in hand with capitalist processes of urban development, regeneration and gentrification (Devlin 2006;Gertel 2009;Lessinger 1988;Roy and AlSayyad 2004;Smart 1988;Harvey 2008;Soederberg 2018;Desmond 2016).…”