CITY OF NON‐EQUIVALENTS: Making, Maintaining and Disrupting Customary Attachments to Land in Port Vila, Vanuatu

Abstract

In this article I describe how a permanent underclass is being inadvertently created in a South Pacific city. I use Descola's idea of equivalence in human relations to explain urban tenure and evictions in the postcolonial South Pacific city of Port Vila. Vanuatu is a nation of 82 islands. Its archipelagic geography segregates most people's autochthonous lands, preventing ready access to the national capital. Port Vila, then, is a city of non‐citizens of the urban space: by accident of birth, a small number of people now control the land where virtually all poor migrants to the capital will live. This article describes how two non‐equivalent relations—production and protection—feature prominently in the ways that people talk about tenure insecurity. In sum, these non‐equivalent relations form the basis of how people relate to each other in terms of urban land occupancy. The pervasiveness of non‐equivalence indicates a fundamental difference between denizens of Pacific cities, whose urban policies will need to adapt to account for its presence. A right to the city may look different in places where non‐equivalence is at the very stamba (foundation) of how the city is made.