International assemblage of the security of tenure and the interaction of city politics with the international normative discourse

Abstract

The article approaches the development of security of tenure as a core component of the international human right to adequate housing through the assemblage theory. The concept of security of tenure has been assembled through institutional processes led by UN-Habitat, UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Adequate Housing, the World Bank and others. These international institutions have developed a plurality of approaches to the tenure security. In addition, through international regime interaction these different approaches eventually became linked and started influencing each other. In such a way, the security of tenure developed from underdeveloped and separated human rights norm, developmental goal, and attribute of freehold title to a house or land, to a complex and pluralistic concept. Furthermore, the recognition of the complexity and the plurality of forms of tenure security have been related to the semiformal nature of international processes led by UN-Habitat and others, which connected the international level with the local conditions around the world. Through these processes, a pallet of actors with local experiences made international institutions recognize the uniqueness and complexity of the urban/local space as crucial for approaching the tenure security. Acknowledging the specificity and the pluralism of local – urban – socio-political spaces by international institutions shows how interlinked international and urban levels of policy-making have become.