Popular Neighbourhoods Research Articles

La propiedad realmente existente

The article studies the land legal situation in six popular neighbourhoods in Quilmes town, in the Gran Buenos Aires, considering the complexities of the state processing of legal titles. Though the systematization of different qualitative surveys in those six neighbourhoods during nine years, it is sustained that regularization policies favour the circulation of documentation which recognizes the de facto possession of land without assimilating it to deeds. In this way, the state develops an intervention modality that displaces the boundaries between formal and informal, favouring multiple uses of this state recognized certifications. At the same time, the systematization of surveys showed changes that have occurred during the last years in regularization policies. The certificados de vivienda familiar seem to have acquired a considerable circulation, intersecting a national program in a provincial policy. However, the hybrid legal prospect, of de facto possession without deeds, persists, although with an increasing presence of public policy made documentation that certify possession.

Peripheral resistance: geographies of occupation and policing in Tunisia

ABSTRACT This article sets out to study Tunisian protest movements and state responses by focusing on continuities in protest and policing rather than radical breaks like the 1956 independence, the 2010–2011 revolution, or more recently, Kais Saied’s July 25 self-coup. Through ethnographic fieldwork among activists in Tunis, residents of its popular neighbourhoods and with the El-Kamour movement of the southern region of Tataouine, the article develops three arguments and theoretical tools: firstly, it argues that residents of Tunis’ popular neighbourhoods and Tunisia’s inland and southern regions are racialized through consistent securitisation at the hands of urban elites as they migrated to the cities to establish what would become peripheral popular neighbourhoods. Secondly, it develops and applies a lens of internal occupation to analyze policing of these racialized populations. Through a grounded theory-approach, it articulates intimately felt indignity and humiliation in the context of an outsider-insider policing dynamic. Thirdly, it argues that racialisation is perpetuated by a state-capitalist class nexus consisting of economic benefactors of the reserve army of labour and natural resource extraction. Security forces violently enforce this socio-economic order. Lastly, it suggests that internal occupation is a useful theoretical lens through which to analyze policing of marginalised populations in general.

Debris of sovereignty: discards and territorial domination in a popular neighbourhood of Lagos, Nigeria

ABSTRACT In Lagos’s popular neighbourhoods, the economic transformations of the 1980s have brought about the emergence of popular economies of urban mining centred on discards. In the district of Mushin, discards have at the same time sustained the emergence of powerful street lords. Based on an ethnography of the neighbourhood of Sàkani, this article details associations between local powerholders and garbage, while analysing the central role played by waste in the agglomeration and stabilisation of an alternative local sovereignty. For its symbolic, economic and spatial value, garbage is enlisted by local leaders in the maintenance of a system of territorial domination that hinders the functionalisation of urban space and generates chronic socioenvironmental suffering while mediating the conditions of economic, social and political marginality pressed onto its dwellers.

« Y’a pas de place pour vous ». Formes de non-recours à des modes d’accueil des jeunes enfants en quartiers populaires

Cadre de la recherche : Les inégalités d’accès aux modes d’accueil des jeunes enfants sont particulièrement fortes en France. Nous les analysons à travers la question du non-recours aux droits et aux services (Warin, 2016), afin de penser les bricolages de garde des familles vis-à-vis d’une offre publique locale. Objectifs : L’objectif est d’analyser les différents bricolages de garde qu’opèrent les mères des milieux populaires confrontées à une offre publique très insuffisante d’accueil de la petite enfance et à des critères d’attribution qui ne leur sont pas favorables. Méthodologie : L’enquête empirique repose sur des entretiens de type compréhensif réalisés auprès de mères (N = 27), dans trois quartiers populaires, d’une ville très faiblement dotée en modes d’accueil formel des jeunes enfants. Résultats : L’analyse montre les différentes formes de non-recours qu’ont les mères aux modes d’accueil de jeunes enfants. Ces formes sont connectées aux situations sociales et professionnelles auxquelles elles sont confrontées en lien avec une insuffisance de l’offre locale : une non-demande assumée ou revendiquée ; une non-information et une méconnaissance de l’offre et des démarches administratives ; une non-proposition et une non-réception face à des propositions alternatives à la crèche, des gardes informelles par des proches ou au noir. Avec l’avancée en âge des enfants, les mères expriment des besoins croissants d’accueil qui visent spécifiquement leur développement et leur socialisation, et non seulement les nécessités liées à leur insertion et activité professionnelle. Conclusion : Les difficultés rencontrées par les mères interrogent l’offre municipale dans le domaine de la petite enfance, d’un point de vue quantitatif et qualitatif, ainsi que les bricolages de garde combinant des solutions de garde formelles et informelles. Contribution : Pour comprendre le recours ou non des mères à un accueil extrafamilial, nous soulignons l’importance de prendre en compte simultanément la situation de l’offre locale à laquelle elles sont directement confrontées et leur propre situation sociale et professionnelle.

Urban spatial politics and collective action in revolutionary Cairo: Counter spaces and paradoxes of mobilisation

This article centres the role of Cairo's popular forces in the 2011 revolutionary Uprising in Egypt. It does so by bringing to focus the relationship between these forces' everyday spatial practices and forms of contention, on one hand, and revolutionary activism and protests in central places like Tahrir Square, on the other. It demonstrates that everyday life in popular neighbourhoods of Cairo is constitutive of a political domain in which ordinary citizens cultivate resources, dispositions and capacities for collective action and mobilisation of the kind witnessed in the January Uprising. It also shows how the lived experiences of ordinary citizens in the city's popular neighbourhoods are formative of the oppositional subjectivities enacted in the context of this revolutionary mobilisation.The article identifies and illuminates two primary paradoxes of revolutionary mobilisation. The two paradoxes arise out of a disjuncture between modalities of action pursued by Tahrir-oriented revolutionary activists (al-thuwwar) on one hand, and popular forces' tactics, strategies and conception of the Revolution, on the other. Tracing the engagement of popular forces in the context of the Uprising, this contribution reveals that in enacting their oppositional subjectivities popular forces articulated their own conception of the Revolution. More specifically, the article expounds on how they did so by shifting the locale of revolutionary action from Tahrir Square to Cairo's streets and popular neighbourhoods, and by widening acts of urban insurgency to advance rights claims to the city.

Citizen Participation in Architecture and Urban Planning Confronted with Arnstein’s Ladder: Four Experiments into Popular Neighbourhoods of Hainaut Demonstrate Another Hierarchy

Widely used and disseminated, Arnstein’s ladder is considered a reference for citizen participation. It, nevertheless, involves a recurrent bias and a certain confusion when confronted with projects in the Belgian and French working-class districts of cross-border Hainaut. Characterised by fundamentally opposed management systems (one bureaucratic and hierarchical, the other democratic or even delegative), these worksites challenge Arnstein’s concepts and allow us to understand that information is not a level in the participation ladder, but the condition for the functioning of the whole system. Likewise, they also teach us that manipulation and delegation are not opposite extremes but can percolate in any level of participation. Finally, they reveal that the interlocking of powers and the interplay of stakeholders can easily turn the established participation mechanism from exemplary to revolting and vice versa.

COVID-19 in real time: comparing the struggle of three low-income neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires

This article seeks to explain why some popular neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires have responded more effectively than others to COVID-19. It compares actions that took place between March and October 2020 in the neighbourhoods of Villa 20, Villa 15 and Villa 1-11-14. We analyse public policies carried out by government agencies, especially the Instituto de Vivienda de la Ciudad (IVC) and the Ministerio de Desarrollo Humano y Hábitat (MDHyH), and the active collaboration of local organisations. While significant scholarship has focused on COVID-19 effects and coping strategies in Latin American neighbourhoods, there is limited analysis of how pre-existing relationships between local actors and government agencies have shaped neighbourhood responses. This comparative analysis shows that in fact the consolidation and depth of historical working relations between local government and local organisations determined the response capacity of each informal neighbourhood.

Street Authority and the Politics of Everyday Policing

Abstract Through the ethnographic lens of so-called gangs and anti-gangs, this doctoral thesis investigates the politics of everyday policing in the conflict-affected city of Goma (Democratic Republic of Congo) and the distinct style of street authority it produces. The gangs and anti-gangs focused upon in this doctoral study are marginalised youths from Goma’s popular neighbourhoods, who see it as their mission to protect the cities’ inhabitants from the everyday “crime” and violence committed by maibobo (street children) and other gangs. To understand how gangs and anti-gangs carve out a political space for themselves within Goma’s broader policing environment, and impose themselves as street authorities, I draw from three main theoretical concepts: liminality, performance and the political imagination. The doctoral thesis is situated in bodies of literature around urban violence and (in)security, conflict studies, vigilantism and civilian policing groups, governance, and the exercise of public authority. Methodologically, besides the main method of ethnography, this PhD relies also on visual methodologies – in particular a collaborative filmmaking methodology that was developed during the course of the research.

The Fair Value of Bread: Tunisia, 28 December 1983–6 January 1984

AbstractThe “Bread Riots” that broke out in Tunisia on 28 December 1983 lasted barely ten days. Yet, they cost the lives of over one hundred people. The revolt studied here centred on two popular neighbourhoods of Tunis in the wake of massive, World Bank-sponsored development plans. This article seeks to understand how the inhabitants in these quarters reacted to the establishment of a new welfare state that was more concerned with fighting poverty – or fighting the poor – than with equalizing conditions or offering the same opportunities for everyone. Based on this case study, I argue that the great Bread Revolt of 1983–1984 marked a break with past practices of state reform and popular protest and suggest that International Monetary Fund and World Bank prescriptions and state implementations reconfigured the political and social landscape of independent Tunisia.

COVID-19 outbreak in Brazil: adherence to national preventive measures and impact on people\u2019s lives, an online survey

BackgroundThe first case of COVID-19 infection was diagnosed in Brazil 26th February 2020. By March 16th, physical distancing and confinement measures were implemented by the Brazilian government. Little is known about how these measures were followed up by the Brazilian people and their impact on daily routine.MethodsIn early April 2020, using an online platform, we organized an online survey among adults living in Brazil about their COVID-19 preventive behavior and impact on their daily routine.ResultsData from 23,896 respondents were analyzed (mean age: 47.4 years). Due to COVID-19 restrictions, half (51.1%) of the professionals reported working from home. Regular handwashing was practiced by 98.7% of participants; 92.6% reported adhering to the 1.5-2 m physical distancing rule, but only 45.5% wore a face mask when going outside. While 29.3% of respondents found it relatively easy to stay at home, indoor confinement was extremely difficult for 7.9% of participants. Moreover, 11% of participants were extremely worried about their health during the COVID-19 epidemic. Younger people, male, persons living in a rural area/village or popular neighbourhoods, students and workers reported less preventive behaviour.ConclusionRestrictive measures markedly affected the daily and professional routines of Brazilians. Participants showed a satisfactory level of adherence to national COVID-19 prevention guidelines. Qualitative and follow-up studies are needed to monitor the impact of COVID-19 in the Brazilian society.

Urban Policy as a Main Key towards Sustainable Built Environment of Popular Neighbourhood: Case Study of “El Cabanyal” Valencia Spain

El Cabanyal, a popular neighbourhood and old fishermen’s village, in the Valencian Community, eastern Spain, is a very explicit example on how popular neighbourhoods can be drastically transformed in line with urban policies’ evolution. This neighbourhood -that has a strong cultural identity expressed by its vernacular architecture, local art and social life-kept resisting gentrification during the last 30 years. As a result, this neighbourhood has shown a great deal of deterioration as a price that had to pay in order to keep its own identity within the Mediterranean city of Valencia.This paper demonstrates the evolution of local and popular neighbourhoods according to adopted urban policies by taking the neighbourhood of El Cabanyal as a case study. Therefore, it will firstly scrutinize the proposed urban policies/strategies by the regional government in order to develop this neighbourhood. Secondly, it will shed light on the participatory design solutions based on the local community involvement, to develop the area without destruction and getting use of its potentials. Finally, it will propose a diagnostic tool and ecological urban solutions that can be elaborated in order to tackle such complex problems.We believe that the change of urban policies can give different spectrums to sustainable development strategies by addressing social problems and heritage conservation questions. The delicacy of the issue is a typical 21st Century problem encountering different contexts. It can be an obstacle for sustainable urban/social development if not addressed correctly. This is why it must be integrated in the strategies proposed by urban policies’ decision makers.

¿Turismo juvenil? Los viajes en las biografías de jóvenes de barrios populares de Buenos Aires

En este artículo presento resultados de mi tesis doctoral cuyo objetivo general es analizar las experiencias de jóvenes de barrios populares de Buenos Aires, indagando articulaciones entre movilidades y corporalidades en sus procesos de individuación. Se propuso un abordaje cualitativo, siguiendo los lineamientos de la teoría fundamentada. Se realizaron entrevistas semi-estructuradas, relatos biográficos y observación participante en una organización social que ofrece talleres circenses gratuitos a jóvenes de barrios populares. Investigaciones comienzan a advertir el turismo juvenil, destacando el aumento de jóvenes viajeros y los núcleos turísticos creados en torno a éstos. Ahora bien, las posibilidades de viajar y vacacionar difiere entre distintos grupos sociales, por lo que su abordaje se vuelve una forma de reconocer desigualdades. En este trabajo se identifican las características de los viajes presentes en las biografías de jóvenes entrevistados, el modo en que son percibidos, los sentidos en torno éstos, así como los facilitadores y las limitaciones para llevarlos a cabo. De los emergentes en sus relatos se distinguen tres tipos de viajes: posibilitados y motivados por vínculos familiares, propuestos por agrupaciones religiosas asentadas en barrios populares de la ciudad para supervivencia en la naturaleza y proyectados a futuro, como deseo de movilidad potencial.

From neighbourhood to “globalhood”? Three propositions on the rapid rise of short‐term rentals

This Commentary is an attempt to understand the recent, rapid rise of short‐term property rentals in some of the world's most popular neighbourhoods, and what it means for communities, whether urban or rural. The literature to date has tackled the issue from a number of different perspectives, but there is no clear consensus on what the key issues are within this sector of the so‐called “sharing economy.” Despite claims to the contrary, I argue that there is something new about this phenomenon, in relation to its growth, intensity and spatial concentration. I also argue that it represents a kind of double disruption, and that home sharing can usefully be conceptualised as neighbourhood sharing if we want to arrive at a better understanding of local reactions to it, and how we might best respond to it from a regulatory point of view.

Grime jako muzyka i etnografia kryzysu

This article provides the reader with an overview of selected aspects of cultural significance of grime music and related phenomena. This musical genre creates an explicit background of contemporary social relations existing in multicultural, popular neighbourhoods of British cities. Grime’s relations with the media and the political surrounding partly resemble some features of the 1990’s “cultural boom”. However, grime and its network of relations live in the times of crisis. The overview of grime’s attributes presented hereinafter is an introduction to a wider study, currently in the process of development.

A View on the Limiting City Expansion: Inner-City Attraction Issues Through Linear Correlation

Abstract: Current inner-city1 depopulation coupled with significant peripheral expansions disrupting nature, are the rule in many of the world's large cities such as Montreal. Expansion needs to be balanced from the inner-city attraction perspective. To deal with that objective and following an inductive process in the scientific method, two field surveys were implemented in one of Montreal's inner-city most popular neighbourhoods (Sainte-Marie) for measuring its current attraction power. Results expose that current local residential housing/services improvement in terms of their medium to high needs/impedances2 linear correlations to achieve it discourage people to continue living in Sainte-Marie on a “free will” basis. This report concludes that limiting city expansion at least through this inner-city neighbourhood's attraction level is still very much a myth.

Protecting the capital? On African geographies of protest escalation and repression

This article centres the role of Cairo's popular forces in the 2011 revolutionary Uprising in Egypt. It does so by bringing to focus the relationship between these forces' everyday spatial practices and forms of contention, on one hand, and revolutionary activism and protests in central places like Tahrir Square, on the other. It demonstrates that everyday life in popular neighbourhoods of Cairo is constitutive of a political domain in which ordinary citizens cultivate resources, dispositions and capacities for collective action and mobilisation of the kind witnessed in the January Uprising. It also shows how the lived experiences of ordinary citizens in the city's popular neighbourhoods are formative of the oppositional subjectivities enacted in the context of this revolutionary mobilisation.The article identifies and illuminates two primary paradoxes of revolutionary mobilisation. The two paradoxes arise out of a disjuncture between modalities of action pursued by Tahrir-oriented revolutionary activists (al-thuwwar) on one hand, and popular forces' tactics, strategies and conception of the Revolution, on the other. Tracing the engagement of popular forces in the context of the Uprising, this contribution reveals that in enacting their oppositional subjectivities popular forces articulated their own conception of the Revolution. More specifically, the article expounds on how they did so by shifting the locale of revolutionary action from Tahrir Square to Cairo's streets and popular neighbourhoods, and by widening acts of urban insurgency to advance rights claims to the city.

Emplacement and the politics of heritage in low-income neighbourhoods of Marseille

Recent scholarship addressing efforts to celebrate heritage in low-income neighbourhoods and housing estates has stressed the importance of attending to the continuity of place-based social relationships as a key factor in residents’ understandings of heritage, and, drawing on Smith’s conception of an ‘authorised heritage discourse’, the ways these understandings differ from hegemonic and generalised expert discourse emphasising the deficiencies of the material environment. In this article, I examine a new object of state intervention in France, ‘the heritage of popular neighbourhoods’, and describe points of convergence and conflict between local heritage work in Marseille and the recent discursive framework established to employ heritage as a tool in reorganising French state policy towards urban peripheral neighbourhoods (the politique de la ville). Drawing on ethnographic research (2007–2014), this article identifies emplacement as a key feature in residents’ performances of neighbourhood heritage, a feature often absent or poorly elaborated in heritage work promoted by French urbanist policy in the past. I describe the ways emplacement has been expressed aesthetically in arts projects, trace the range of social networks and relationships enacted, and describe the political implications of these performances as a tool for promoting solidarity across time and space in Marseille.

The chemo and the mona: Inhalants, devotion and street youth in Mexico City

This paper understands inhalant use – the deliberate inhalation of volatile solvents or glues with intentions of intoxication – as a socially and culturally constituted practice. It describes the inhalant use of young street people in Mexico City from their perspective (“the vicioso or inhalant fiend's point of view”). BackgroundEven if inhalant use is globally associated with economic inequality and deprivation, there is a marked lack of ethnography. Incomprehension and indignation have blocked our understanding of inhalant use as a form of marginalised drug use. The current explanation models reduce inhalant consumption to universal factors and individual motives; separating the practice from its context, these models tend to overlook gustatory meanings and experiences. MethodsThe paper is informed by long-term, on-going fieldwork with young street people in Mexico City. Fieldwork was done from 1990 through 2010, in regular periods of fieldwork and shorter visits, often with Mexican colleagues. We created extensive sets of fieldnotes, which were read and re-read. Results“Normalcy” is a striking feature of inhalant use in Mexico City. Street-wise inhabitants of popular neighbourhoods have knowledge about inhalants and inhalant users, and act accordingly. Subsequently, Mexico City's elaborate street culture of sniffing is discussed, that is, the range of inhalants used, how users classify the substances, and their techniques for sniffing. The paper also distinguishes three patterns of inhalant use, which more or less correlate with age. These patterns indicate embodiments of street culture: the formation within users of gusto, that is, an acquired appetite for inhalants, and of vicio, the inhalant fiends’ devotion to inhalants. ConclusionWhat emerges from the ethnographic findings is an elaborate street culture of sniffing, a complex configuration of shared perspectives and embodied practices, which are shaped by and shaping social exclusion. These findings are relevant to appreciate and address the inhalant fiends’ acquired appetite and habit.

O Centro histórico de Dublim (Irlanda) e a experiência de reabilitação de Temple Bar

The aim of this paper is to present the experience of Temple Bar’s rehabilitation in Dublin. As one of the most popular neighbourhoods in Dublin’s historical city centre, Temple Bar has in the past undergone severe population decline coupled with a profound social, functional and environmental crisis. However, in the 1990s, one of Europe’s greatest urban rehabilitation success stories was to begin in Temple Bar. Within about a decade, it was able to draw residents once again, attract new activities, bring employment back and enhance Temple Bar’s urban environment. The culture cluster has played a truly innovative role in the strategy that was followed.

Decolonization in the Heart of Empire: Some Fanonian Echoes in France Today

Abstract: This paper offers a translation of key texts by the contemporary Mouvement des Indigènes de la République (MIR) and its key intellectuals: Sadri Khiari and Houria Bouteldja. Following Khiari, post-colonial situations are best understood as recompositions: territorially mediated re-articulations of colonial pasts with other social relations. To respond to the complexities of this post-colonial recomposition, MIR propose an ambitious politics of “autonomy” and “mixity”. “Autonomy” (externally in relationship to the state and organized politics and internally for feminist groups) is seen as an indispensable precondition for a socio-politically mixed, and potentially universalizing, political formation politics. More counter-colonial than post-colonial in orientation (Hallward), MIR attempt to give direction to three decades of revolt emanating from France's racialized popular neighbourhoods, including the uprising of 2005. I argue that MIR's interventions take up themes from the analyses by Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi and Suzanne and Aimé Césaire to make countercolonial critique “live” in France today.