2008
DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-7053.2007.00252.x
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Displacement, Estrangement and Sovereignty: Reconfiguring State Power in Urban South Africa

Abstract: Academic writing often portrays migrants as either passive victims of violence and aid recipients or as courageous heroes facing horrific indifference and hazards. This article recodes them and their activities as potent forces for reshaping practices of state power. In this depiction, displacement also becomes a lens for re‐evaluating the nature of sovereignty in urban Africa. Through its focus on Johannesburg this article explores how migrant communities intentionally and inadvertently evade, erode and explo… Show more

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Cited by 33 publications
(11 citation statements)
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“…And even here, effective power is often shared in ad hoc ways with private security firms and landowners who consciously fragment and delimit the state's authority (Ballard 2005;Dirsuweit 2002; see also Caldeira 1996). As the recent violence in and around Johannesburg so dramatically and tragically reveals, it is mobs and mafias who are often the true sovereigns of African city streets (see Landau and Monson 2008;Misago et al 2009). Elsewhere, urban governance regimes are characterized by patronage politics, irregular policing, and neglect (benign and otherwise).…”
Section: Conclusion: Belonging and Participation In African Citiesmentioning
confidence: 94%
“…And even here, effective power is often shared in ad hoc ways with private security firms and landowners who consciously fragment and delimit the state's authority (Ballard 2005;Dirsuweit 2002; see also Caldeira 1996). As the recent violence in and around Johannesburg so dramatically and tragically reveals, it is mobs and mafias who are often the true sovereigns of African city streets (see Landau and Monson 2008;Misago et al 2009). Elsewhere, urban governance regimes are characterized by patronage politics, irregular policing, and neglect (benign and otherwise).…”
Section: Conclusion: Belonging and Participation In African Citiesmentioning
confidence: 94%
“…Recognising ongoing analytical difficulties with making clear-cut and policy-driven distinctions between movement that is forced and movement that is voluntary (see Castles and Miller (2003) and Van Hear (1998), for some recent attempts to do so), this collection explores questions such as: the particularities of violence associated with dislocation and dispossession, and how these articulate with deeper questions of purity and belonging (Appadurai 2006;Jansen and Lofving 2007); patterns of power and practices of sovereignty in the production and perpetuation of displacement (Landau and Monson 2008); processes of replacement within spaces affected by displacement; and the conflicts and new dislocations produced through resettlement, repatriation and return (Stepputat 2008).…”
Section: Displacement and Migrationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This paper considers whether this peripheral existence is a result of local authorities being unable to-or choosing not to-engage with such hidden populations (bureaucratic invisibility), or if it is that such spaces have been constructed by their occupants in such a way that they remain hidden, purposively escaping the attention of local authorities and remaining invisible. This involves reconsidering the notion of inclusivity and the role of the state within African cities (Landau 2008;Landau and Monson 2008).…”
Section: The Complexity Of Developing Country Urban Contextsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This manifests as a conflicting desire for recognition and intervention by some, compared to the use of tactics by others in order to deliberately remain hidden and evade the authorities. It is necessary to challenge the premises of inclusion in African cities; this involves recognising that inclusion is not always a formal, state-determined process, but that it is residents themselves who are shaping African cities in an increasingly informal way (Landau 2008;Landau and Monson 2008). This paper will explore the complexity of urban populations, and the challenges outlined above, through the discussion of a population of internal (rural to urban) migrants residing, and surviving, within a 'hidden space' in the inner-city of Johannesburg, South Africa.…”
Section: The Complexity Of Developing Country Urban Contextsmentioning
confidence: 99%