Speaker
Description
This paper explores the intersection of migration trajectories with development induced displacement in globalizing cities, where intensifying circulations of people and capital collide to make inhabitation increasingly unsettled (Simone 2019; Landau; 2022). Specifically, I explore dynamics of affordable shelter provision by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork (2018-19, 2021-22) in Fikirtepe, Istanbul. Fikirtepe is an informally-originated area undergoing large-scale redevelopment that since 2005 has been postponed, nearly collapsed, and only recently resumed – though with no end in sight. Here, housing affordability for a variety of resource-constrained populations ‘on the move’ emerges as an unintended by-product of ‘failed’ planning.
As the material and social fabric in Fikirtepe is being ripped apart and heightened socio-spatial inequalities are crystallised in close proximity, many long-time dwellers have already moved out, yet others do hold on, alongside various categories of “outsiders”: seasonal workers from the country’s Kurdish regions, people “on the move” from the broader Middle East, “circular” migrants from post-Soviet central Asian republics, as well as national and foreign buyers and renters of flats in the completed high-rises.
Arguably, the open-ended standstill in which Fikirtepe finds itself indirectly facilitates the provision of homes for populations on the move in search of more or less temporary accommodation, and other groups in need of affordable shelter. The prospect of impending displacement frees up units, as live-in owners and tenants who can afford it vacate their flats and move out to overcome the protracted uncertainty and decline of living conditions. Combined with the deteriorating housing stock and the general undesirability of the location, this keeps rental prices relatively affordable. The steady influx of new inhabitants provides a lifeline to struggling neighbourhood businesses and to homeowners, in many cases thus supporting their own relocation.
In other words, local conditions of deterioration and social disentanglement, triggered by the unforeseen trajectory of a ‘failed’ redevelopment, creates opportunities for populations drawn to the area precisely because of the affordances this situation offers. This, in turn, helps generate circuits of workable livelihoods that allow long-time residents and newcomers to momentarily get by — although with substandard solutions and no guarantee of sustainability in the longer term.
By examining informal housing provision through concrete examples, I highlight the interdependencies and uneven transactions among diverse transient populations – many of whom would not typically be classified as such. Building on calls for socially and spatially embedded migration analyses (Glick-Schiller & Cağlar, 2015; Dahinden, 2016; Van Baar, 2017), this study challenges the binary of ‘local host community’ vs. ‘populations on the move’ and the common assumption in urban development and humanitarian policies that populations, housing arrangements, and lifeworlds are spatially stable – either as planning objects or as a pre-existing status quo to be restored (Landau, 2022). It underscores the material and spatial interconnectedness of staying put and passing through, making home and moving on, displacement and emplacement, dynamics that are often hardly dissociable. Recognizing how disparate trajectories of displacement and dislocation intersect amid extractive urban restructuring, bordering mechanisms, and deepening inequalities (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016; Van Baar, 2017; Gawlewicz and Yiftachel, 2022) underscores the need for better integration between humanitarian responses, urban planning, and housing policies (Fawaz, 2017; Landau, 2022).
While these shelter provision practices remain on the margins of studies on affordable housing and planning policies, the dispersed maneuvers of resource-limited residents allow them to navigate life under often unfavorable conditions and, collectively, shape how the city operates. Therefore, I argue that planning systems, housing policies, and social movements should recognize and engage with these practices as forms of city-making, rather than dismissing them as marginal or apolitical – or worse, actively obstructing them.
References
Dahinden, J. (2016). “A plea for the ‘de-migranticization’ of research on migration and integration”. In Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(13), 2207–2225. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1124129
Fawaz, M. (2017). Planning and the refugee crisis: Informality as a framework of analysis and reflection. Planning Theory 16, 99–115. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095216647722
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2016). “Refugee-Refugee Relations in Contexts of Overlapping Displacement”. In IJURR, Spotlight On The Urban Refugee ‘Crisis’: Reflections on Cities, Citizenship, and the Displaced.
Gawlewicz, A., Yiftachel, O. (2022). “‘Throwntogetherness’ in hostile environments: Migration and the remaking of urban citizenship”. In City 26, 346–358. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2022.2056350
Glick Schiller, N., & Çağlar, A. (2016). “Displacement, emplacement and migrant newcomers: Rethinking urban sociabilities within multiscalar power”. In Identities, 23(1), 17–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2015.1016520
Landau, L. (2022). “Governing displaced cities. Calibrating reconstruction amidst instability”. In H. al-Ḥāriṯī (Ed.), Urban recovery: Intersecting displacement with post war reconstruction. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Simone, A.M. (2019). Improvised lives: rhythms of endurance in an urban South, After the Postcolonial. Medford, Mass. Polity, Cambridge, UK.
Van Baar, H. (2017). “Evictability and the Biopolitical Bordering of Europe”. In Antipode 49, 212–230. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12260
| Keywords | displacement, urban transformation, temporariness, housing, migration |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
