Urban Displacement and Resettlement in Zimbabwe: The Paradoxes of Propertied Citizenship

TY - JOUR

T1 - Urban Displacement and Resettlement in Zimbabwe: The Paradoxes of Propertied Citizenship

AU - Hammar, Amanda

PY - 2017/12/1

Y1 - 2017/12/1

N2 - This article examines what urban displacement and resettlement can reveal about the nature of, and co-constitutive relationships among, property, authority, and citizenship. It focuses on an unusual case in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where long-term illegal squatters living under constant threat of violent displacement by various local and national authorities were formally resettled by the Bulawayo City Council on peri-urban plots with houses. What surfaces are some of the paradoxes of propertied citizenship and of attaining seemingly “proper” lives in conditions of sustained marginality, a result that is not entirely unexpected when impoverished squatters are resettled far outside the frame of the city and its possibilities.

AB - This article examines what urban displacement and resettlement can reveal about the nature of, and co-constitutive relationships among, property, authority, and citizenship. It focuses on an unusual case in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where long-term illegal squatters living under constant threat of violent displacement by various local and national authorities were formally resettled by the Bulawayo City Council on peri-urban plots with houses. What surfaces are some of the paradoxes of propertied citizenship and of attaining seemingly “proper” lives in conditions of sustained marginality, a result that is not entirely unexpected when impoverished squatters are resettled far outside the frame of the city and its possibilities.

KW - Former Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences

KW - Urban displacement; resettlement; property; authority; citizenship; Zimbabwe

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0002-0206

JO - African Studies Review

JF - African Studies Review

ER -