The Untamed Politics of Urban Informality: “Gray Space” and Struggles for Recognition in an African City

Abstract

This Article examines the ways in which market vendors in Kampala, Uganda, responded to plans to redevelop their markets through the concession of long-term leases to private investors. These plans met with massive resistance from the marketers, with significant outcomes. The Article uncovers how the marketers actively negotiated a “gray space” between legality and illegality and creatively used the law, with a view to asserting themselves as the legitimate rulers of their markets. It shows how the marketers engaged in highly diverse modalities of struggle, stretching across the legal/illegal boundary. They organized in multiple configurations which were flexible, hybrid and mutant in character, rather than being fixed in particular organizational categories. In their struggles, the marketers engaged in shifting alliances and with a disparate range of political allies. Their politics were fluid, untamed and pragmatic, but also contradictory and fractured. This flexibility and pragmatism enabled them to navigate a complex political landscape and to make instrumental use of a generally unfavorable legal environment

Exploring the Socio-Economic Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic in Marketplaces in Urban Ghana

“…Several studies have noted that this kind of brutality characterised the enforcement of orders by national and city authorities in markets across many African countries, long before the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic (see for instance Asante and Helbrecht, 2019a; Goodfellow and Titeca, 2012; Monteith, 2015; Obeng-Odoom, 2013; Resnick, 2019). This is largely because traders and their so-called informal economic activities are often perceived by city authorities as stains soiling the image of the modern African city (Adaawen and Jorgensen, 2012; Asante, 2020; Lindell and Ampaire, 2017; Monteith, 2015). However, traders have different perceptions of themselves and their economic activities.…”

Navigating the city: dialectics of everyday urbanism

“…While some days might involve helpful support and advice from other sellers about the movements of municipal enforcement teams, other days may leave her vulnerable, and occasionally she will drop what she's selling and rapidly move for cover when she sees the dreaded yellow shirts in the distance. This is the nature of everyday urbanism for many of Kampala's street traders as they navigate what Lindel and Ampaire () term, after Oren Yiftachel (), ‘grey space’. Meanwhile, the ongoing harassment of youth in Namuwongo by the police, common across many popular neighbourhoods (Kimar ), limits Amiri's social infrastructures.…”

The “Gray Spacing” of Market Vendors and Their Associations and Vendors’ Collective Agency in the Zambian City of Kitwe

“…For instance, the exclusionary practices of the local government in Kampala were largely countered through ingenious ways by the vendors associations. Their initiatives were shaped by a broad range of actions, varying from demonstrations and court cases to generating political support through networking (Lindell and Ampaire 2016). Other scholars have also observed that associations may instead adopt a more dependent relationship with the political elite.…”

“…However, connections between associations and political elites have also been subject of discussion of whether these are beneficial to the organizing of vendors and their potential to advance their claims (e.g., Goodfellow and Titeca 2012;Meagher 2010). In addition, associations' relations with power structures or opportunities for leverage may shift as a consequence of abrupt changes in the volatile political and institutional environments in which they operate (e.g., Lindell and Ampaire 2016;Lindell and Appelblad 2009). This paper addresses the challenges of market vendors and their associations in relation to the (local) government through a study conducted in the Zambian city of Kitwe.…”