The citizenship promise (un)fulfilled: The right to housing in informal settings

Abstract

Informal settlements (often called ‘slums’) seem to defy the realisation of social rights. TheUN SpecialRapporteurs, in their reports, present informal dwellers mostly as the victims of human rights violations. Informal dwellers are not merely victims, however; they also produce non‐state welfare through economic and social practices on the margins. Considering the human right to housing (as promise of social citizenship) and informal settlements, we discuss the ‘everyday social contract of informality’ that frames the production of non‐state welfare in densely populated urban areas in the global South. Planning theorists, by introducing ‘insurgent citizenship’, examine the potential of bottom‐up initiatives that claim the ‘right to the city’. Insurgent citizenship focuses on the enjoyment dimension of human rights. In this vein, we suggest that human rights cannot be implemented in informal settings without full consideration to the spatiality and sociality of non‐state welfare.

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