Shifting Urban Margins: Accessing Unequal Spaces of Ageing and Care in Zanzibar and Muscat

Abstract

Older people constitute a growing proportion of the urban population and are encountered in all kinds of spaces and neighbourhoods across cities. This article argues that urban seniority and elderly care are a fruitful, new lens to study how inhabitants on the social margins create urban space and social cohesion. This article draws on ethnographic research in the cities of Zanzibar, Tanzania, and Muscat, the capital of Oman. Many older inhabitants of cities experience frailty, serious health problems, or even disabilities and are no longer able to work or make a living, which pushes them towards the social margins. The ethnographic examples and reflections in this article illustrate, first, how cities can be investigated from the perspective of social and spatial marginality. Second, they show how urban dwellers' social positions can shift between the margins and centres of an urban society depending on their health and access to unequal spaces of ageing and care. And third, the paper analyses how some elders respond to marginality by taking up transnational and cosmopolitan agency.

LIVING ON THE MARGINS: The Socio‐spatial Representation of Urban Internally Displaced Persons in Ethiopia

“…Moreover, our multi-sited fi eldwork has uncovered the multidimensional disadvantages faced by IDPs in diff erent urban contexts and scales, including in a geographical center of a city. Beyond exploring the ways in which the social and spatial exclusions are articulated in diff erent contexts (Aceska et al ., 2019 ;Staudacher, 2019 ), we have shown their interaction and entanglement with the symbolic representation of IDPs in the urban body politic, creating a complex system of urban marginality. While IDPs resist these forms of marginalization, this resistance engenders further stigma that the city uses to justify exclusion and control.…”

“…Recent ethnographic studies have suggested a relational and subjective approach to urban marginality, demonstrating how even in the geographical center of a city, dwellers experience marginality due to stigma and exclusionary practices (Aceska et al ., 2019 ;Aedo, 2019 ;Staudacher, 2019 ). Building on this approach, our study focuses on how IDPs who are relocated to urban settlements experience marginality related to their displacement and urban bordering practices.…”

“…Aceska et al ( 2019 ) argue that urban studies largely assume an isomorphism between space and identity, or tend to equate spatial marginality with social marginality. However, the relationship between social and spatial dimensions is complex, as they can interact and create further disadvantages (see Staudacher, 2019 ).…”

“…Inspired by urban ethnographic studies that have called for a multidimensional and relational understanding of urban marginality (Aceska et al ., 2019; Staudacher, 2019), our study highlights ethnographic research in two Ethiopian urban IDP settlements, exploring how displacement and urban bordering practices create complex layers of IDPs’ marginality. The term ‘relational’ refers here to the contextual understanding of how people (IDPs and long‐term residents), places and practices are related and reproduce marginality.…”