Urban Resettlements in the Global South

Urban Resettlements in the Global South provides new perspectives on resettlement through an urban studies lens. To date, resettlement has been theorised through development studies and refugee studies, but urban resettlement is also a major dimension of urban development in the Global South and may help to rethink contemporary urban dynamics between spectacular new town developments and rising incidences of eviction and displacement. Conceptualising resettlement as a binding notion between production/regeneration and destruction/demolition of urban space helps to illuminate interdependencies and to underline significant ambiguities within affected people’s perspectives towards resettlement projects. This volume will offer an interesting selection of ten different case studies with rich empirical data from Latin America, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, focused on each stage of resettlement (before, during, after relocation) through different timescales. By offering a frame for analysing and rethinking resettlement within urban studies, it will support any scholar or expert dealing with resettlement, displacement, and housing in an urban context, seeking to improve housing and planning policies in and for the city.

Raffael Beier is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the department of International Planning Studies at TU Dortmund University, Germany. During the time of co-editing and writing, he was working as the coordinator of the PhD programme in International Development Studies at the Institute of Development Research and Development Policy at Ruhr University Bochum and was further associated with the Centre for Built Environment Studies (CUBES) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Currently, he is leading a research project on dropout and post-resettlement mobilities in state-led affordable housing projects, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Amandine Spire is Assistant Professor in Geography at the Centre for Social Sciences Studies on Africa, America and Asia (CESSMA) of the University of Paris, where she researches migration and urban issues and leads courses on urban and social geography. Her current research focuses on power relations and city dwellers’ subjectivities in cities in the Global South, particularly in Lomé (Togo) and Accra (Ghana). From 2014 to 2019, she led a research program on the right to the city in the Global South and she focused her research on the relocation and urban resettlement of city dwellers in Africa.

Marie Bridonneau is an Assistant Professor in Geography at the University of Paris-Nanterre and a member of the LAVUE research unit. She has also been the director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) since September 2018. Her research deals with urban dynamics (involuntary displacements, small towns, urban peripheries) and politics of cultural heritage in Ethiopia and Eritrea.