Navigating stigma through everyday city-making: Gendered trajectories, politics and outcomes in the periphery of Lima

Abstract

Over the last two decades, a growing body of scholars from the fields of psychology, sociology, law and public health have devoted their attention to examining how and why stigma operates as a form of discrimination, paying particular attention to ethno-racially stigmatised groups. However, less attention has focused on how ordinary women and men engaged in peripheral urbanisation processes are stigmatised through multiple material, social and political mechanisms and with a myriad of outcomes. Building on this literature, and drawing on the trajectories of a man and a woman living in the periphery of metropolitan Lima, I explore how stigmatisation shapes the daily lives of poor and impoverished citizens as they try to find a place in the city, and how and why their everyday practices contribute, or not, to the transformation of stigma traps. I argue that the everyday city-making practices of the ‘unsheltered’ are inextricably linked to the politics of bare citizenship. As those stigmatised become individualised, isolated and undermined, they also are deprived of being part of a collective experience, and are deeply challenged to reclaim their agency as entitled citizens. The wider the range of stigmatisation mechanisms at work, the more difficult it is for those subjected to stigma to counteract them, as they become disadvantaged in a broad range of domains: from social relations, to tenure security, access to services and infrastructure, livelihood opportunities, and psychological and physical wellbeing. I further contend that a deep examination of the material world – the dwelling, the neighbourhood and the city – and of the practices and imaginaries that produce this material world, opens a window into the micro-politics of how stigma is negotiated, apportioned and resisted in the everyday lives of those who are politically and materially unsheltered.

Introduction: Infrastructural stigma and urban vulnerability

“…Butler (2016) argues that vulnerability should also be seen as the corollary of a subjecthood based on interconnection and relationality, meaning infrastructural vulnerability can also be transformed into collective demands and action. As undermined, they also are deprived of being part of a collective experience, and are deeply challenged when reclaiming their agency as entitled citizens' (Allen, 2021). On the other hand, the ways residents of informal settlements deal with infrastructural uncertainty and make physical upgrades to living quarters can be viewed as 'de-stigmatisation strategies'.…”

“…These seek to address both residents' immediate infrastructural needs and the wider structural factors that make them vulnerable. Thus, close attention to everyday planning and the debates around infrastructural (dis)connect can reveal 'the micro-politics of how stigma is negotiated, apportioned and resisted' (Allen, 2021).…”

Afterword: Citizenship and the politics of (im)material stigma and infrastructure

“…This spatialised perspective recognises that 'collective representation fastened on place' (Wacquant et al, 2014(Wacquant et al, : 1278 intersects with other discredited attributes (e.g. race, class, health) to create 'stigma traps' (Allen, 2021) that (re)produce and extend the vulnerabilities of specific individuals and groups. For example, in Urban Outcasts, Wacquant (2008) revealed how residents of Paris' Banlieues and Chicago's South Side developed personalised strategies to separate their individual identity from the deviant collective tropes of their spatiality, because admitting their address to 'outsiders' would associate them with the 'stain' of the place.…”

“…For example, in both Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia) and the Bedouin communities of Israel, residents sought access to networked infrastructure not only as a material means to secure improved services, but also as a citizenship strategy to propel their residential space (district and/or building) and sociopolitical identity into inclusion in legal and political networks (Plueckhahn, 2021;Yacobi and Milner, 2021). Similarly, residents of the urban periphery of Lima sought to claim their citizenship rights to the city by constructing their own houses and occupying land in the absence of state provision (Allen, 2021). Concurrently, several articles also highlight how the state uses infrastructure as a tool to discipline and control particular groups and behaviours deemed 'uncivic'.…”

“…While there is wide acknowledgement that stigma is often rooted in discrediting the attributes of collective units, such as communal residence of a spatiality/territoriality or group-based demographic identity, the articles also demonstrate how collection action can be a crucial tool in combating stigma and securing access to infrastructure. For example, Allen's (2021) discussion of 'bare citizenship' in Lima reveals that while stigmatisation can isolate individual residents and limit their capacity to claim their civic rights, access to community groups and collective action provides the social capital necessary for marginalised residents to access infrastructure and overcome stigma. This reveals the importance of scale for understanding the relationships between stigma and infrastructure -for while place-based stigma is arguably collective in its target, and can be mitigated by collective action, it is also individualised in its specific impacts.…”