(Im)mobility at the margins: low-income households’ experiences of peripheral resettlement in India and South Africa

Abstract

Expanded state-subsidised housing programmes in middle-income countries raise questions about the displacement and socio-spatial marginalisation of poor households. Examining these questions through people's experiences of resettlement indicates the importance of mobility to their lives. Drawing on a mixed-method comparative study of Ahmedabad, Chennai and Johannesburg, we ask: How does the relocation of low-income households to urban peripheries reshape the links between their physical and socio-economic mobility, and how does this impact on their ability to build secure urban futures? Experiences of families moving to five peripheral settlements indicate two linked challenges to the social and economic mobility of the peripheralised urban poor: first, their immediate and individual ability to be mobile within the city and second, the longer-term social mobility of their households. While trajectories towards secure urban citizenship for all remain a policy aspiration, housing policies and practices are placing this on hold or even reversing this, with mobility constraints locking many low-income groups into marginality. Introduction: Peripheral relocation and (Im)mobilityMany cities in middle-income countries are witnessing significant expansions in the production of state-subsidised housing, at a scale that is relocating millions of people. Their promise is to deliver housing, infrastructure and services that meet universal standards of decency and sustainable human settlements and, at the same time, to replace informal tenure arrangements, services, and governance with legible and governable urban environments (Patel, 2016). The danger is that delayed or partial 2021 the Author(s). Published by informa uK Limited, trading as taylor & Francis group.

Geographies of peri‐urbanization in the global south

“…Such works offer insights into the incremental and informal processes of urban expansion (Aguilar, 2008; Aguilar & Guerrero, 2013; Allen et al., 2017; Zhu & Guo, 2014) and highlight the conflict between the wishful thinking of planned residential growth and infrastructure development versus unplanned informal developments and existing infrastructure deficits (Follmann et al., 2018; Tian et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2013). The rise of middle‐class communities (Bartels, 2020; Dupont, 2016; Mercer, 2020; Webster et al., 2014) and state‐led housing projects – like Minha Casa Minha Vida Entidades in Brazil (Libertun de Duren, 2018; Stiphany & Ward, 2019), resettlement colonies in India, and state‐sponsored housing in South Africa (Williams et al., 2021) – foster an extremely heterogeneous population composition and “heterogenous infrastructure configurations” (Lawhon et al., 2018) in peri‐urban areas. Thus, while early research on the geographies of peri‐urbanization in the global south generally equated geographic peripherality with poverty and marginality (see, e.g., Allen, 2003; Mbiba & Huchzermeyer, 2002; Simon et al., 2004), more recent research has challenged this view by increasingly investigating the middle class' role in the transformation of the urban periphery (Bartels, 2020; Dupont, 2016; Mercer, 2020; Webster et al., 2014) and the emergence of new centers of economic power paired with large‐scale infrastructure investments in the urban periphery (Kanai & Schindler, 2019; Schindler & Kanai, 2021; van Noorloos & Kloosterboer, 2018).…”

Urban studies in India across the millennial turn: Histories and futures

“…Numerous studies have critically assessed the outcomes -typically private developer-led slum redevelopment projects or state-built mass tenements on urban peripheries. They have highlighted the poor quality of design, construction and services in these projects, their ghetto character and the disruptive effects of relocation on the livelihoods of residents, analysing how these effects have exacerbated the vulnerabilities of the urban poor and engendered new geographies of segregation, disconnection and risk in metropolitan India (Coelho, 2016;Desai et al, 2020;Doshi, 2013;Williams et al, 2021). Scholarship on peripheral urbanisation in India has yet to contend fully with the (mostly hidden) presence of large state-built slum-resettlement colonies in metropolitan peripheries across the country (cf.…”

Kota Tua Jakarta Revitalization: An Effort to Embody Human Rights City in Railways Track's Vicinity During the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…On the other hand, the state has a role in reshaping the relationship between the physical and socioeconomic mobility of the relocated community. It will be challenges, the direct ability of individual communities to move and the long-term social mobility of their households [8].…”

“…Meanwhile, according to the floor area of the widest house, average household in DKI Jakarta has a floor area of 20-49 m 2 (35,55%) [8].…”