Home of last resort: Urban land conflict and the Nubians in Kibera, Kenya

Abstract

Amid expansive and often informal urban growth, conflict over land has become a severe source of instability in many cities. In slum areas, policies intended to alleviate tensions, including upgrading programmes, the legal regulation of informal tenure arrangements, and the reform of local governance structures, have had the unintended consequence of also spurring violence and conflict. This paper analyses the conflict over a proposed ‘ethnic homeland’ for the Nubian community in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, in order to advance knowledge on the strategies communities adopt to promote their interests and how such strategies impact on urban conflict management. Theoretically, we apply the perspective of ‘institutional bricolage’, which captures how actors make use of existing formal and informal structures in pragmatic ways to meet their conflict management needs. While previous research focuses primarily on how bricolage can facilitate cooperation, the case analysis uncovers how, over time, the land issue has become closely intertwined with claims of identity and citizenship and a political discourse drawn along ethnic lines. In turn, such processes may contribute to the intractability of conflict, causing significant challenges for urban planning.

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