Grounding urban production: Resident claims-making as financialization in Mumbai’s ‘slum’ lands

Abstract

Mumbai’s slum redevelopment projects have emerged as key sites for financial investment. Yet, while residents’ claims-making has shaped the manner in which slum lands have been converted into financial investments, their interests and actions have rarely been viewed as part of the financialization processes. This paper situates local residents and developers in the networks of intermediaries increasingly used to study housing financialization. Based on ethnographic research on an internationally financed luxury housing development in central Mumbai, the paper contends that ground-level processes of claims-making and negotiation are key components of value creation through land development and housing financialization. Analysing resident claims through the lens of financialization, and identifying the institutional and policy mechanisms that shape residents’ financial subjectivities, adds place-specificity to the increasingly variegated study of urban production processes and expands analyses of claims-making beyond frameworks of political resistance.