Review,
Urban displacement and resettlement in Zimbabwe: The paradoxes of propertied citizenship
Affiliations
- [1] University of Copenhagen [NORA names: KU University of Copenhagen; University; Denmark; Europe, EU; Nordic; OECD]
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Authority,
Citizenship,
Property,
Resettlement,
Urban displacement,
Zimbabwe