Gentrification in South Africa: The ‘Forgotten Voices’ of the Displaced in the Inner City of Johannesburg

Abstract

Gentrification is a contentious form of urban regeneration as it has been associated with class conflicts and the displacement of working-class residents. However, with the evolution and intensification of gentrification, its once clear-cut ties to displacement have been obscured and displacement is now often denied and contested in the literature. Indeed displacement has declined as a research question and as a defining feature of gentrification. Furthermore, a number of recent studies have provided quantitative evidence of the limited extent of displacement and have questioned whether low-income residents are indeed displaced and whether gentrification is detrimental to the poor. However, these studies all share a particular understanding of gentrification-induced displacement as a process primarily concerned with the eviction of people from a certain area. However, displacement occurs via a number of other processes and in this study, Marcuses’s conceptualisation of displacement is used in exploring the experiences of displacement of inner-city residents in Johannesburg, South Africa, where gentrification processes are emerging. A qualitative approach was used in uncovering the experiences of working-class residents living in gentrifying areas, as well as those who have been excluded or physically displaced by gentrification processes. The findings of the research suggest that although gentrification is a relatively new phenomenon in South Africa, it has the potential to displace many poor inner-city residents, who may not necessarily gain access to alternative, affordable housing.