Political Agency of the Urban Poor: A Case Study of the Social Mobilization of Durban’s Shack Dwellers
MSc Thesis
International Development Studies
Graduate School of Social Sciences
University of Amsterdam
July 8, 2015
Bart Brouwer
Supervisor:
Drs. Courtney L. Vegelin
Second Reader:
Drs. Christine Richter
Abstract
More than one billion urban residents worldwide lack adequate housing. One of the major challenges of global urbanization therefore is to improve the living conditions of people living in informal settlements. This research investigates the political agency of the poor in an urban context, and more specifically how shack dwellers in Durban, South Africa, use social mobilization as a means to enhance their political agency. Moreover, it analyzes the power dynamics between the urban poor and the state, arguing that the informal settlement is essentially a place of politics, an arena where claims to citizenship are being made. This research mainly contributes to the knowledge on social mobilization by exploring the meaning of urban social movements in the South African context. Special focus will be on the shack dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, whose local influence appears to be greatly overstated in both academic literature and the media. This research argues that the movement was associated with a moment of contestation and rebellion against the state, which had partly driven the movement’s status beyond a level that it could impossibly live up to. The informal settlement is used as a case study to better understand shack dwellers’ possession of political agency and strategies of social mobilization by empirically showing how the informal settlement looks – physically, socially and politically. The research mainly relies on qualitative research methods, including in-depth interviews, focus groups and observations, in order to give an in-depth, bottom-up account of the lived experiences and mobilization strategies of the people who live in the settlement. This research finds that a troublesome relationship between Durban’s shack dwellers and the municipality severely affects the political agency of the former, which is partly caused by the cumbersome political-administrative interface that involves a democratically elected ward council that serves to represent the community’s interests.
Keywords: urban poverty; urban informality; political agency; social mobilization; citizenship; participation; South Africa, Durban; urban social movement; shack settlement