Urban Displacement and Resettlement in Zimbabwe: The Paradoxes of Propertied Citizenship

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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.
Original languageEnglish
JournalAfrican Studies Review
Volume60
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)81-104
Number of pages24
ISSN0002-0206
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2017

    Research areas

  • Faculty of Theology - urban displacement, urban resettlement, citzenship, zimbabwe

ID: 185236651