Spaces of Insurgent Citizenship

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UCL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING UNIT

DPU WORKING PAPER NO. 132

The Right To The City:Spaces Of Insurgent

Citizenship AmongPavement Dwellers InMumbai, India

Anne-Marie Sanvig Knudsen

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Working Paper No. 132ISSN 1474-3280

THE RIGHT TO THE CITY: SPACES OF INSURGENTCITIZENSHIP AMONG PAVEMENT DWELLERS IN

MUMBAI, INDIA

Anne-Marie Sanvig Knudsen

2007

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1 INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................... 11.1 A few reflections on social science and methodology ................................................... 2

2 THE DEBATES ........................................................................................................................... 32.1 Globalisation and entrepreneurial planning ..................................................................... 32.2 Citizenship unpacked ......................................................................................................... 4

2.2.1 Modern citizenship challenged .................................................................................. 42.2.2 Formal and substantive citizenship ........................................................................... 6

3 THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .......................................................................................... 63.1Lefebvre ............................................................................................................................... 6

3.1.1 The right to the city ..................................................................................................... 83.2 Insurgent citizenship .......................................................................................................... 8

4 THE CASE AND CONTEXT ...................................................................................................... 104.1 Mumbai ............................................................................................................................... 11

4.1.1 Vision Mumbai: turning Mumbai into a world-class city? ..................................... 114.2 Pavement dwellers: the road towards recognition ........................................................ 12

4.2.1 Breaking down instituti onal walls ............................................................................ 125 ANALYSIS.................................................................................................................................. 14

5.1 Insurgency as an everyday practice ............................................................................... 145.2 Insurgency as a spatial strategy...................................................................................... 155.3 The right to the city ........................................................................................................... 17

CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................... 19BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................... 20ENDNOTES................................................................................................................................... 23

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THE RIGHT TO THE CITY: SPACES OF INSURGENT CITIZENSHIP AMONG PAVEMENTDWELLERS IN MUMBAI, INDIA

1 INTRODUCTIONWhen two-thirds of the worlds population isforecasted to live in cities by 2050, of which3 billion will live in informal settlements (UN-HABITAT), the notion of citizenship calls fora re-conceptual jostle and it needs to bereinserted in an urban context. The urban isno longer a neutral entity; it is a politicalspace, in which the meaning of citizenshipand urban life is on trial every day. Powerrelations are both forcefully contested andupheld.

In Mumbai, India more than 50 % ofthe inhabitants live in what are deemed

informal settlements. These circumstancescontrast sharply with the MumbaiDevelopment Plan, which seeks to makeMumbai, Indias financial capital, a slum-freecity by 2020 in order to meet the citysaspirations to become a stronger player inthe global city-circuit. As Amin points out(2006) these battles of what is at the heart ofthe good city become painfully and almostbizarrely vivid when the daily struggle foraccess to basic infrastructure is juxtaposedwith simultaneous aspirations of capitalistconsumption and growth. These aspirations

do not appear to be in line with the everydayrealities of the majority of Mumbaispopulation. The paradox seems to be thatthe slum and pavement dwellers claims andappropriations of the city are not recognisedconceptually nor perceptually - even if theyoutnumber the formal Mumbai. In thiscontext James Holstons notion of insurgentcitizenship gains a very urgent meaning.The pavement dwellers fight for rights tohousing and electricity is exactly based oninsurgency- a struggle over the meaning andorientation of citizenship. Holston refers to

these insurgent, everyday practices andstruggles as citizenship because theynegotiate what it means to be a member ofthe modern state (Holston, 1998:47).

With Mumbai and the pavementdwellers as the empirical backdrop for thispaper I want to investigate the notion of theright to the city as a way of articulating aframework for citizenship by answering thefollowing questions:

How is the notion of formalcitizenship defined and applied in theMumbai context?

How have the pavement dwellerscontested their invisibility in policy?

How are their acts of insurgencyarticulated spatially?

How have spaces of insurgencycontested and reframed the notion ofcitizenship?

The primary aim is to undertake atheoretical exploration of the notion ofcitizenship, using the case of the pavementdwellers in Mumbai to exemplify and discuss

the concept of citizenship. This is done bydrawing on Lefebvres work on the right tothe city and James Holstons and JohnFriedmanns concepts of spaces ofinsurgent citizenship. By employing thesetheoretical approaches I wish to emphasizethe importance of space as an analyticalcategory when discussing the notion ofcitizenship. Lefebvres spatial theory willserve as the foundation of my analysis as itin this case links the spatial articulation ofeveryday activities in urban space into abroader debate on citizenship. In synthesis

with Holston and Friedmanns notion ofspaces of insurgent citizenship I hope thatmy theoretical framework will help bring outthe complexities of my case, which are notimmediately obvious. Precisely becausespace, depending on its conceptualisation,is such a powerful tool, which can serve toboth neutralise and contest dominant powerrelations, the politics of forgetting entailsconflicts and contestations, and spatial[re]configurations are the product ofnegotiations and alliances among multipleactors with different and conflicting interests

(Lee and Yeoh, 2004). A main debate, whichunderlies my topic, is how the narrative ofthe global city impacts urban planning (Amin1997, Robinson 2002). Saskia Sassensglobal city thesis is the point of dispute inthis debate, which I intend to develop in thispaper in order to position myself within thecontext of my case study. Furthermore, thenotion of citizenship needs to be unpacked

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in relation to the global city and theideological assumptions underpinning it.

1.1 A few reflections on social scienceand methodologyBefore commencing my work I would like tobring in a few considerations about socialscience and the values my work subscribesto. The selection of theory I intend toemploy is predominantly based on a post-modern approach to science - among otherthings they are not value neutral. Therefore Iwant to draw up briefly the differencebetween positivistic and post-modernthinking.

Traditional science is oftenassociated with positivistic thinking. Thisscientific paradigm is concerned withphenomena, which are objectively andpositively observable and quantifiable.

Rationality is an import aspect of this type ofthinking; without rationality there is noscience. What this implies is that there is aReality out there, which can be neutrallyobserved and described. Morality is similarlya part of Reality and can be reached throughrational scientific enquiry (Kvale, 1994:69-72)). Positivistic science thus seeks to bevalue neutral. Under the label of modernismthis scientific paradigm has had (and stillhas) a major impact on planning. Theplanner and planning is perceived as value-neutral and apolitical, seeking to advance

society towards a common good.Post-modern thinking breaks with

the ideal that science equals a rationallyobservable reality. Reality within thisparadigm comes in plural and is concernedwith the diversity and subjectivity ofknowledge. The human factor, which thepositivistic sciences sought to eliminate, isreinserted in post-modern thinking.Objectivity is exchanged with subjectivity.

Along with the post-modern approach toscience, the social sciences have witnesseda so-called spatial turn. Globalisation and

post-modernity has blown up traditionalboundaries of space where historicalprocesses of struggle, transformation, andreaction are played out (Cultural StudiesNewsletter, 2003). Instead space isconstantly imploding andexploding in atime-space compression

1as time and space

have become two inseparable factors.Space has thus in the post-modernconceptualisation, become a product and a

producer of social relations rather than aneutral container. The focus on the socialproduction of space also values everydaylife as a potential agent for social change(Simonsen, 2004:173). I will elaborate moreon this aspect in my introduction to Lefebvrein chapter 3.

They way I conceive science andknowledge is of course related to my choiceof methodology. I have decided to use acase study for my research and that calls forsome thoughts regarding validity,generalisation and reliability. Even if somemay dismiss these criteria as reminiscent ofpositivistic thinking I believe it is worthpaying some attention to this aspect ofqualitative research.

Validity refers to whether astatement is true and scientifically correct-are we measuring what we set out to

measure? This is a difficult question toanswer when there is not a one-to-onecorrespondence between reality and ourknowledge about it. According to Kvale(1994:234), validity is instead reachedthrough dialogue and negotiation. Post-modern science raises a multiplicity ofquestions instead of coming up with onesolution. Using a case study as methodologyalso raises questions about generalisation.Clearly, it is hard to generalise from onecase. My objective, on the other hand, is notto produce replicable knowledge. It is of a

more generative character- exploring whatcould be by looking at what my case studytells me when I employ my theoreticalconcepts (Kvale, 1994:230). Finally,reliability is difficult to assess as I base mycase study on information collected byothers. What I can say is that most of mycase study material is written by members ofSPARC. This may imply a bias, as SPARCis likely to sympathise with their work,especially given the fact that SPARCthemselves have a political agenda. Toverify the reliability of the data used I can

add my own experiences in Mumbai. Fromwhat I have seen and heard when visitingthe pavement dwellers and SPARC in May2005, I find the conclusions drawn in thevarious articles written by SPARC to bereasonable.

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2 THE DEBATES

2.1 Globalisation and entrepreneurialplanningIn order to understand the aspirations andcontradictions of a city like Mumbai it isimportant to outline the context in which itoperates. In the following section I willdiscuss the notion of global cities and whatimplications this discourse has for cities andurban planning worldwide.

Firstly, a few words on globalisationand what this concept implies. Whetherglobalisation in itself is a new phenomenonis subject to extensive academic dispute. Iwill just note here that what seem essentialabout globalisation, as an expression ofadvanced capitalism, are the post-fordistflexible production-systems, which create a

geographically fragmented productionprocess - as opposed to the verticalintegration of fordist production. SaskiaSassens global city thesis (1991) hasbecome a very prominent explanatory modelfor how to understand the world economy inthe post-fordist era of dispersed production(and consumption) patterns. Her thesis hasinspired policy-makers throughout the worldand has as such almost become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sassen conceives theglobal city as the strategic locus of theglobal economy. The dispersal of production

and financial markets simply need ageographically concentrated counterpart inorder to organise and coordinate thesehighly complex processes. Because thisconcentration happens in cities, they are afruitful starting point when discussingglobalisation. Accordingly there has been achange in urban governance and planningsince the 1980s. Harvey (1989) identifies ashift from a managerial to an entrepreneurialapproach. Exactly because the nation-stateis often bypassed by multinationalinvestments and capital-flows, the local

scale and thus local government, have anincreasing responsibility to boost, marketand create their comparative, location-specific advantages in the competition forinvestments. This means an increased focuson public-private partnerships and generalreliance on the market to function as thedistributive mechanism. However, with suchresponsibility does not necessarily follow amatching organisational and economic

capacity to actually implement such policiesin a satisfying and socially just manner.Relating this occurrence to urban planning,the planner has increasingly been given therole as a market-facilitator and the practiceitself has become, at least seemingly,depoliticized. But as Harvey again pointsout, the city is more than just merely athing, which can be nurtured in order tocreate economic growth and prosperity. Thecity is rather a reflexive outcome of socialprocesses and urban form (1989:6):

When we speak, therefore, of atransition from urban managerialism tourban entrepreneurialism these last twodecades, we have to take cognizance in thereflexive effects of such a shift, through theimpacts on urban institutions as well asurban built environments.

The locality fetish of urban

entrepreneurialism and the global citydiscourse has ironically reproduced a seriesof urban images of spectacle andplayfulness throughout the world. The officialnarrative of the global (and postmodern) cityis that of a unique and diverse cultural,social and urban built environment, that isperpetually repeated from Sweden to Beijingbecause the solidarity of such localitycelebration is rooted in a capitalist globallogic more than civic and social cohesion.Thus, diversity and locality become oddlyhomogenized and exclusive. This is one

side of the coin.Another side is the forgotten

places (Lee and Yeoh, 2004), such asslums, which host millions and millions ofpeople, particularly in the South. It isstriking that such places and realities areignored or eradicated given the fact that theyoften represent a substantial number ofinhabitants, sometimes even the majority.Now, there is hardly any doubt thatglobalisation, in some formation, is a reality.But the point of dispute here is whetherSassens global city thesis is suitable to

explain all cities and even what goes onwithin just one city. As Robinson (2002)shows, the creation of master narrativesabout the city, be it the global or thedeveloping city, leaves out and evendisqualifies an array of experiences andcities. Or as Lee and Yeoh (2004) argue:() globalisation itself is materially anddiscursively constructed out of complexinteractions and power struggles between

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diverse social, political and economic actorsoccurring simultaneously, rather thanhierarchically, across various geographicalscales. When later looking at thedevelopment plan Vision Mumbai it willbecome clear how the official narrative ofMumbai as a global city contrasts with theeveryday experiences of the majority of itsinhabitants. The negotiation of the right todefine whom the city belongs to and what itshould encompass is exactly rooted in adiscussion about citizenship in a globalcontext, which I will investigate in a followingsection (Isin, 2000:15). But firstly, the termcitizenship needs to be unpacked.

2.2 Citizenship unpackedIn this section I wish to give a brief review ofwhat the notion of citizenship entails in amodern conceptualisation. I have chosen

this as my starting point because moderncitizenship is precisely the point of disputeand contestation within the contemporarycitizenship debate. In other words, whatdoes citizenship mean today and in whichdirection is the concept moving (Smith,2002:105)?

In the following I will outline themain features and points of controversywithin modern citizenship. Traditionallymodern citizenship has been defined withinthe realm of the nation-state. This conceptoriginates from the Westphalian

2definition

where citizenship corresponds to thesovereign, territorial nation-state. Hence theprimary political loyalty of the citizen is to thepolitical community of the nation-state. Thus,the nation-state has been the sole entity toaward the legal status of citizenship. Withthe modern citizenship status follows abundle of rights and obligations. Civil rightsare procedural and ensure freedom toconscience and choice (Janoski and Gran,2002:14). The political right to political self-governance is the classical dimension ofcitizenship, which can be traced back to

Aristotle (Smith, 2002:106). Finally, T.H.Marshall included social rights in his seminalwork Citizenship and Social Class [1950](2003).

3Social rights entail welfare,

unemployment security, access to healthcare, education etc and differ from civic andpolitical rights as positive rights, i.e rights torather than rights from (Jones and Gaventa,2002:9). One very persistent feature ofmodern citizenship is that citizenship is

awarded on an individual, universal basis aslong as this individual complies andidentifies with membership terms definedwithin the nation-state. Such a community isgoverned through some sort ofrepresentative political system. But as Smithnotes (2003:108), this is rarely done throughdirect participation in the governing system,but through some kind of indirect,representative measures. This hasamounted to a dominant focus oncitizenship as primarily a legal status,rather than a social process (Isin, 2000:4).Which leaves me at the core of thecontemporary citizenship debates - what isthe meaning and practice of citizenship?

The modern conception ofcitizenship has increasingly been contested.Rather than defining citizenship as auniversal legal status, it has become a field

of struggle as the extension of the term hascome under attack. Who is included andwho is not? In that sense the notion ofcitizenship has become politicized throughactive participation and contestation of themeaning of citizenship. Looking at howcitizenship is conceptualised and practiceddemarcates the contingent line betweeninjustice and justice and suggests strategiesfor the claim-making of recognition andredistribution by those oppressed andexcluded from exercising their citizenshiprights (Isin and Turner, 2002:7).

Furthermore, the nation-state is under attackas the dominant scale under whichcitizenship rights and obligations sort. As therole and the form of the nation-state arethreatened, nationalism is increasinglyconfused with patriotism while civichomogeneity is falling apart. In the sectionthat follows I will look at these discrepanciesin order to understand post-modernchallenges to the articulation of moderncitizenship.

2.2.1 Modern citizenship challenged

As Isin and Turner (2002:1)) point to, thecitizenship debate per se is not a novelty,but the conditions which enable thearticulation of citizenship have changed.These conditions are exactly those of post-modernity and globalisation. They identifythree axes around which citizenship is beingredefined: extent (who is in and who is out),content (what are the rights andresponsibilities) and depth (thickness and

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thinness). In a similar vein, Mark Purcellsuggests three characteristics of thechanging nature of contemporary citizenship(Purcell, 2003:566): Firstly, citizenship isbeing rescaled as other communities of ageographically and politically different scaleare challenging the dominant national scaleof political community. Secondly, citizenshipis being re-territorialised, as the link betweenprimary political loyalty and the nation-states territorial sovereignty is increasinglybeing distorted. Finally, citizenship is beingreoriented as different communities andidentities (religion, gender, ethnicity,sexuality etc) challenge the communitydefined by the nation. One current examplefrom Denmark is that of lesbians whorecently won the right to artificialinsemination, sponsored by the state, liketheir heterosexual counterparts. This implies

that the social right to have children, grantedby the Danish state, has now beenexpanded to include more than just thehegemonic definition of heterosexualparenthood.

Even if all above mentionedcharacteristics are related, I have chosen toexplore the content and implication of thereorientation (extent) of citizenship. Entailedin this characteristic is that alternativepolitical communities challenge the formalpolitical community of the nation-state. Thediscourse of identity politics is strong and is

tightly related to the global city. Whereascitizenship traditionally has been based onequality, it is gradually being challenged byan alternative post-modern discourse, whichis based on difference (Purcell, 2003:573).The problem with citizenship based on thenotion of equality is that it excludes thosewho diverge from its universality (Holstonand Appadurai, 1999:8). As such there isnothing wrong with making rights equallyavailable but the problem arises if theserights cannot be equally exercised due tostructural factors and unequal power

relations (Young, 1991:36). Furthermore, toa wide extent cities are jumping the nationalscale in their interconnectedness at theglobal scale. The culture of cities and theirinhabitants is often very diverse andgrounded in relationships, identities andinterests, which exceed the national scale.Public interest that is not pluralist hardlymakes sense in a post-modern context

4.

The socio-cultural composition of

contemporary cities is increasinglyrecognised as complex, fragmented, diverseand with a potential for conflict:

When residents with differenthistories, cultures and needs appear in ourcities, their presence disrupts the normativecategories of social life and urban space.(Sandercock in Friedmann and Douglass1998:165)

To gain an understanding of how thereorientation of political community affectsand challenges the traditional conception ofcitizenship, I want to briefly assess Youngsnotion of politics of difference. What Youngopposes is the liberal assimilationist ideal,which presumes that in a society wheredifference makes no social difference,people can develop themselves asindividuals, unconstrained by group norms

and expectations. This (modernist) ideal isopposed by Young because it turns out thatdifference actually does make a socialdifference - even if equality is appliedformally (Young, 1990:158, 163). Youngperceives the recognition of difference asessential and positive. It liberates oppressedgroups from the subordination of auniversalist ideal which is blind to de factosocial difference. What needs to bementioned is that difference is not naturalper se. Difference is rather a socialconstruction and serves to balance

dominant discourses on right and wrong,moral and immoral etc. Difference on theother hand has real social outcomes.Therefore, the politics of difference alsoserve to unpack, denaturalise and politicizedominant cultures and discourses. Thepositive recognition of difference allows forthe possibility to negotiate the (contingent)relationship between the oppressed and theoppressor (Young, 1990:166). Thereorientation of citizenship, as I understandit, is exactly related to the occurrence of thepolitics of difference. Loyalty to the nation-

state as the single, political community hasbeen broken into multiple communities ofidentity. What this means for the realisationof citizenship will be investigated in thefollowing section.

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2.2.2 Formal and substantive citizenshipMuch of the contemporary citizenshipdebate concerns the relationship betweenformal and substantive citizenship: Formalcitizenship refers to membership in apolitical community () substantialcitizenship concerns the array of civil,political and social rights available to people(Holston and Appadurai, 1999:6). Thus,formal citizenship concerns status andsubstantive citizenship concerns theenacted content. But as Holston and

Appadurai emphasize, the two do notnecessarily unite. Even if you have formalmembership of a political community, youmay not have access to the conditions whichenable the practice and claiming ofsubstantive citizenship. This distinction isrelevant in relation to how the notion ofcitizenship is articulated, because the liberal

approach to citizenship often becomesexcluding when difference is perceived asinequality. As discussed in the previoussection, blindness to difference thus oftenperpetuates and enforces inequality,because even if we are all formally equal,we are not all the same in terms of identity,gender, social status etc. What this means isthat there can be discriminating structuralforces in play, such as the examplementioned previously, where lesbians wonover a strong hegemonic conception of whatparenthood entails. Simply put, even if we

are all formally equal, the outcome is notnecessarily equitable.

As Gaventa and Jones point out,there is a difference between citizenship asa status and as a practice. One thing is tohave the statutory right to secure housing.But barriers, institutional or otherwise, canhinder the citizen in exercising this right.Hence participation or active citizenship isthe enablement and exercising of theserights. Following Lister, Gaventa and Jonestake this a step further and refer to therelationship between participation and

agency.To act as a citizen requires first asense of agency, the belief that one can act;acting as a citizen, especially collectively, inturn fosters that sense of agency. Thusagency is not simply about the capacity tochoose and act but also about a consciouscapacity, which is important to theindividuals self identity. (Lister in Gaventaand Jones, 2002:6)

Substantive citizenship is therefore alsoabout obtaining the rights to have rights(Gaventa and Jones, 2002:11). The notionof substantive citizenship and enablement ofclaim-making shifts the focus from content toprocess. This furthermore implies anacknowledgement of the contingency of thecontent of citizenship rights. Hence theconcept of citizenship becomes centred onthe actively enacted and political practice ofcitizenship; political because the processchallenges power relations and existingstructures. Precisely because cities havebecome the main arena of these struggles,they serve as a relevant backdrop for aninvestigation into the status and practice ofcitizenship, such as Turkish immigrants inFrankfurt struggling with underclass stigma(Sandercock, 1998:140) or poor people from

Cape Town, South-Africa, struggling for theirrights to shelter (Miraftab and Willis, 2005).The reason is that cities are the locus thatcontains the mesh of scales in play. Both thelocal, global and national scale constantlyimplodes and explodes the formation ofcitizenship (Staeheli, 2003).

The struggle for spaces ofparticipation is therefore at the centre of thecontemporary citizenship debate. When Imove on to my analysis I will look at exactlyhow the contradiction between formal andsubstantive citizenship can provoke a

response that seeks to contest and expandthe spaces of modern citizenship. Even ifthe scale of the nation-state is beingcontested, the notion of the sovereignnation-state still remains strong. It is exactlythis schism between the notion of traditionalcitizenship and the contested realities ofcitizenship that I want to investigate. Thisstruggle will be conceptualised throughJames Holstons notion of insurgentcitizenship in the following chapter.

3 THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

3.1 LefebvreIn this section I will explain Henri Lefebvresnotion of the right to the city. I have chosento use his concepts because they provide afruitful framework for rethinking to whom theglobal city belongs - how can the forgottenplaces become visible? When trying to getto the core of the logic of the global city,Lefebvre can provide some interesting

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insights. The strength of unpacking thespatial in a lefebvrian sense is that it revealsthe contours of the interaction betweenspatial arrangements and socialorganisation in contemporary capitalism. Atthe same time Lefebvres spatial theory is aplatform to assert a powerful and tangiblecritique of the denial of individual andcommunitys rights to space under theabstract spatialisation embodied incapitalism and technocratic knowledge(Shields, 1998:146). The powerful elementis exactly that these contours are neverstatic but rather drawn in an ongoingdialectic process between the spatial andthe social. This leaves room for a resistiveagency, which holds so much promise whenlooking and making sense of the everydaylife in cities around the world and the dailystruggle for social justice.

I therefore want to extend myaccount for Lefebvres theory to the keyconcepts on the spatial trialectics, whichLefebvre develops in The Production ofSpace. I find it important to introduceLefebvres spatial theory in order to explainthe loophole he provides for spatialappropriation, manipulation and negotiationwhich I will investigate in the followingchapter when looking at the meaning ofinsurgent citizenship. Lefebvres spatialtheory is an extensive endeavour to give anaccount for how space is produced. As

implied in the above section lespace is notjust a container where things and people arejolted around. To Lefebvre space is social,produced in the dialectical span betweenmental and physical space. Space is thusproduced in reciprocal relations and is notas such a finite and static dimension. Spaceis rather a flexible and dynamic synthesis,which shapes and is shaped by socialrelations. Hence, space is both a producerand a product of a spatial dialectic, which isa concrete abstraction betweenobject andsubject (Shields 1998:159-60)

5.

Lefebvres trialectic model explainsthe dynamics by which his notion of socialspatialisation is to be understood. Thus,Lefebvre operates with three differentconcepts of space, which form a triangularspatial dialectic: conceived, perceived andlived space. (Lefebvre, 1991: 36-44; Shields,1998: 160-170):

Conceived space is theconceptualised space, which is dominated

by the ideologies of scientists, planners,politicians etc. This concept serves almostas an abstract epistemology of space.Importantly, this realm is tightly related tothe power of knowledge, because asLefebvre notes conceptual space oftenoperates within an intellectualized systemsuch as verbal signs. The spatial articulationand manifestation of, for instance, adominant planning paradigm, can become apowerful taken-for-granted perception ofwhat planning is rather than what it couldbe. Hence:

Perceived space can be understoodas the topology of social life. This spatialconcept is the daily, prescribedappropriation of the space laid out byplanners and others. It serves as the spatialgrid we navigate in and thereby createcontinuity between ideology and daily

practice. As Lefebvre puts it: How couldthe Church survive without churches?(Lefebvre in Shields, 1998:162). Theimmediate spatialisation of perceived spaceis only mediated in a taken-for-grantedsense. Hence waiting for a green light whenasked to do so by the red light creates apermanence and flow of daily routines,which follows the logic of the abstractideology behind this specific design. Butthere is always an inherent potential forcontestation in any red light or a full stopsign. Which brings me to the third element of

Lefebvres trialectics:Lived space is the contestation of

the prescribed appropriation of space. By itslived practice it turns physical space into asymbolic space. The contestation can beexplicit or implicit, but it is grounded withindaily practice. An example could be a

jaywalker or a graffiti artist. When Banksy6

writes the joy of not being sold anything onan empty billboard in London, he uses thedialectic between the conceptual andperceptual space to suggest a spatialotherness and thus create a dialectic

between ideology and practice (Shields,1998:120). This opens doors to alternativeappropriations and ultimately alternativeconceptualisations of space. This processcan be understood in relation to whatLefebvre calls differential space, a utopianspace.

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3.1.1 The right to the cityThe right to the city is a concept that hasbecome increasingly prominent incontemporary urban development andcitizenship debates. UNESCO is currentlydiscussing the concept as a series oflegitimate claims to the necessary conditionsof a satisfactory, dignified and secureexistence in cities by both individual citizensand social groups (http://portal.unesco.org).Many scholars equally use the right to thecity as a way of looking at currents in howcitizenship is practised throughout the worldand as a way of framing citizenship debates(Purcell, 2003; Isin 2002). The conceptoriginates from Lefebvre. In this context I willuse the right to the city in correspondencewith his spatial theory outlined above. In hiswriting on the right to the city Lefebvredescribes the city in the following way:

And thus the city is an oeuvre,closer to a work of art than to a simplematerial product. If there is production of thecity, and social relations in the city, it is aproduction and reproduction of humanbeings by human beings, rather than aproduction of objects. (Lefebvre in Kofmanand Lebas, 1996:101)

Hence, Lefebvre puts the inhabitant in focusand makes the city a space of potential andpossibilities. The right to the city is just asmuch a right to urban life. From the notion of

the right to the city two concepts arederived: the right to participation and theright to appropriation (Lefevbre in Kofmanand Lebas, 1996:173). The right toappropriation encompasses the right to usethe city in ways and manners which extenduses facilitated by exchange value, profitand commerce (Ibid: 148). Strictly perceivingand valuing urban space as a site forexchange of capital value contradictsLefebvres notion of the city as an oeuvre.

As Purcell puts it, the right to appropriationimplies: the right to maximize the use value

for residents rather than the exchange valuefor capital (2003: 578).The right to participation promotes

the rights for the urban inhabitant toinfluence the production of the urban spacein terms of decision-making. Lefebvreswritings are in defence of the working-classbut can be applied in a wider context. Theright to participation defends the rights of theurban inhabitant to influence decision-

making, which affects the production ofspace. This concept encompasses thosewho are usually expelled from decision-making procedures such as homelesspeople, slum dwellers, street vendors anddrug addicts (Lefebvre in Kofman andLebas, 1996:146). Purcell (2003:578) notesthat this participation could take place atmany scales, from trans-national companiesdisinvestment to housing policies.

Lefebvres concept of the right to thecity is important in the sense that he putsforward the rights of the inhabitant. In termsof citizenship, rights are earned by thosewho live and work in the city, hence the rightto urban life. In this way the urban is more orless the oeuvre of its citizens instead ofimposing itself upon them as a system, asan already closed book. (Lefebvre inKofman and Lebas, 1996:117). As Purcell

notes, it is those, who through theireveryday activities shape and are shaped bythe city, who have the right to the city(Purcell, 2003:577) The reason why the rightto the city fits the global city agenda so wellis because it breaks with national scale.Citizenship, along with its rights andobligations, is earned by living in the city,rather than defined by the hegemonic nationstate. Since cities as discussed previouslyalso jump scales, the idea of qualifyingcitizenship in a lefebvrian sense ispotentially promising (Purcell, 2003:581).

3.2 Insurgent c itizenshipLefebvres spatial theory, which alsounderpins the right to the city, has a stronglink to the realities of everyday lives andpractices. In this section I wish tosupplement Lefebvres lived spaces with thenotion of insurgent citizenship. In myanalysis I will apply those two concepts inpractice. My argument is that it is throughthe lived spaces that the right to the city canbe inserted. Lefebvre does not explicitly givean account for how the empowerment of the

urban inhabitant is to take place. I find thenotion of insurgent citizenship an interestingway of looking at how everyday spatialpractices and manipulations can potentiallylead to a new discourse of citizenship.Furthermore, the dialectical nature ofinsurgent citizenship goes well withLefebvres thinking. I will base the followingon two accounts of insurgent citizenship;

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those of James Holston (1998) and JohnFriedmann (2002).

Holston begins his essay on Spacesof Insurgent Citizenship poetically: Citiesare full of stories in time, some sedimentedand catalogued; others spoorlike, vestigaland dispersed. Their narratives are epic andeveryday; they tell of migration andproduction, law and laughter, revolution andart. (Holston in Sandercock, 1998:37)

Like Young, Holston is engaged inproviding an alternative to the modernistproject. Holston perceives the modernist,liberal political project as rigid andinsufficient in its ability to embrace theneeds of contemporary citizenship. WhatHolston primarily finds problematic aboutthis project (he investigates it with respect toplanning) is that it leaves out any kind ofsocial conflict and fixes the future in an

ideological structure, rather than moremodestly leaving the future open andproviding room for deliberation. Byadvancing society towards a single, unitarygoal, room for alternative interpretations isneglected. But even if these alternativeinterpretations, discourses and narrativesare ignored, they still exist in everydaypractices. It is here that the notion ofinsurgent citizenship becomes relevant.Holston refers to these insurgent, everydaypractices and struggles as citizenshipbecause they negotiate what it means to be

a member of the modern state (Holston,1998:47). These practices are found whereclaims for an inclusive and substantialcitizenship are made and fought, for andagainst. I will later look at how these claimsare made among pavement dwellers inMumbai. Holston urges everyone to takeseriously the insurgent practices becausethey reflect the reality of contemporaryurban life. Since localised identities are nolonger strictly affiliated with the nation-state,he suggests the possibility of a citizenship,which includes the everyday experiences

and struggles of a socially diverse andheterogeneous urban population. Thus,insurgency functions almost as a safetyvalve: They are sites of insurgency becausethey introduce into the city new identitiesand practices that disturb establishedhistories (Holston in Sandercock, 1998:48) .

Friedmann equally seeks to revisethe universalist notion of citizenship whichhas the nation-state as the defining

framework. The representative democracyhas according to Friedmann increasinglyoutplayed its role, and citizenship is nolonger in a one to one relationship with thenation-state. Globalisation has caused amish mash of stakeholders as power has leftthe hands of the nation-state and moved torealm of multinational companies, financialmarkets and international organisations. Inthis process formal power relations havebecome blurred (2002:70). Friedmanntherefore looks for a notion of citizenship,which can both expand and strengthenspaces of deliberative democracy frombelow. He defines insurgent citizenship asfollows:

[I] define insurgent citizenship as aform of active participation in socialmovements or, as we may also call them,communities of political discourse and

practice, that aim at either, or both, thedefence of existing democratic principlesand rights and the claiming of new rightsthat, if enacted, would lead to an expansionof the spaces of democracy, regardless ofwhere these struggles take place. FollowingMouffe, I argue that such movementsconstitute temporary politics that are heldtogether by the ethical bond of its memberscommitment to one another and to thepurposes of the movements itself. It is thesenon-territorial movements of resistance andclaiming that represent the dialectical other

to the formal citizenship from above.(2002: 77)

What can be drawn from his conception ofinsurgent citizenship is the structural aspect.This conception of insurgent citizenship isvery much engaged with the content andenactment of substantive rights, or whatFriedmann calls the possibility for humanflourishing. Friedmanns approach bringsHolstons ethnographic, localized emphasiscloser to the level where citizenship isinstitutionalised. Linking to Lefebvre, both

concepts of insurgency take shape in thelived spaces of the urban dweller. But whereHolstons concept in my view is very muchdelimited by the conceptual space,Friedmanns approach seeks to deliberatelynegotiate how conceptual space is defined.Friedmann lists a number of normativeprinciples, which make up an insurgentpractice. These practices are situated in thecontext of the overall struggle against

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nautonomy7. Friedmanns principles bear

resemblance with Youngs (1991) definitionof social justice in that they are concernedwith forces hindering peoples ability torealise their rights. Equally, Levys strategicaction (1996) is echoed in the ambition toscale up insurgent practices from micro tomacro level and the pragmatic approach tochanging power relations by working with avariety of agencies of actors. Nautonomythus refers to; the structural () forces thatsystematically deny these populations thefundamental right to human flourishing andfull political participation. (2002: 83-83).When later engaging in the case fromMumbai it will be clear that without the linkbetween everyday insurgent practices andthe institutional level, insurgent citizenshipwill never move beyond just mereinsurgency. Or in other words the insurgent

citizenship will not mobilize the means torealise an institutionalised substantivecitizenship. At the same time Sandercock(1998:15) points out that inherent in thenotion of insurgency and transformativepolitics is a long and tiresome struggle. Shealso warns of the danger of losing patiencewhen progress becomes two steps forwardand one step back. Turning overnautonomous forces by insurgent practicesis not done overnight.

4 THE CASE AND CONTEXTI have chosen to use the Byculla pavementdwellers in Mumbai and their struggle forrecognition as my empirical backdrop to myanalysis. To give an idea of the context ofthe case, I will first give a brief introductionto Mumbai before moving on to presentingthe case.

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4.1 MumbaiMumbai is located on a peninsula on thewest coast of India and is the capital of thestate Maharashtra. Like many citiesthroughout the world, Mumbai hasexperienced a gradual process ofdeindustrialisation since the 1970s. Mumbaihad a large cotton textile industry, which hasdeteriorated since the Soviet marketcollapsed in 1991 and structural adjustmentprogrammes were introduced (Harris, 1996;87). Mumbai is now primarily known as thefinancial and commercial capital of India.The city is estimated to have approximately12 million inhabitants of which 50 percentare slum dwellers and another 10 percentare pavement dwellers - as Desai(2001:138) notes: One of the most strikingfeatures of Mumbai is its degraded housing.The approximately 6 million slum and

pavement dwellers occupy 8 percent ofMumbais land 43,000 hectares(Appadurai, 2003: 646; Burra, 2005:71). Halfof the slum dwellers live on governmentowned land, the other half on privatelyowned land (Mukhija, 2002:168). Theunequal distribution of land amongstMumbais inhabitants is a result of acomplicated relationship betweendevelopers, landlords, land-owners,politicians and organized criminals, and thefact that land is scarce as a result ofMumbais geography. (Appadurai, 2003)

Even if slum dwellers make up morethan half of Mumbais population they onlyoccupy a very small fraction of its land. Theyalso receive a very unequal share of basicamenities such as access to running water,toilets etc. (Bapat et al, 2003:71). As Burranotes (2005:68-72), to invest in slumupgrading, such as providing basicamenities, has for a long time beenperceived as an open invitation for ruraldwellers to migrate into the cities and thusundermine the existence of the city. Thisperception is gradually changing and slums

are now seen as housing solutions (Burra,2005:70). This shift has also been markedby a changed perception of the role of thegovernment from a being provider ofhousing to being an enabler, promotingpublic-private partnerships (Desai,2001:140). In 1995 a new government cameto power in Maharashtra. They introducedan ambitious policy, the slum rehabilitationact, which sought to address the massive

problems of degraded housing in Mumbai byrehabilitating slum and pavement dwellersregistered on electoral rolls since 1995. Theidea is, through cross-subsidisation, to makethe housing cost-free. Private developersare given extra building space to be sold onthe free market, thus utilizing the highproperty prices. (Burra, 2005:71) This policyis still far from implemented but did providea change in the housing policy environmentsurrounding slum and pavement dwellers.

4.1.1 Vision Mumbai: tu rning Mumbai intoa world-class city?

Alongside the attempts to improve thehousing situation for slum dwellers theMunicipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai(MCGM) has launched an ambitious urbandevelopment plan for Mumbai. The visionand aspirations of the Mumbai City

Development Plan (MCDP) 2002-2005 areto a large extent informed by a McKinseyreport published in 2003. On behalf ofBombay First, McKinsey undertook a studyon making Mumbai a world-class city by2013. In order to meet this objective Mumbaiwas benchmarked with ten otherinternational cities - London, New York,Singapore, Hong Kong, Sao Paolo, Sydney,Shanghai, Bangkok, Rio de Janeiro andToronto -and a ten year development planwas assembled. The report suggests anumber of strategic improvements, which

concern economic growth, infrastructure,housing, environment, governance, foreigninvestments and public-private partnerships.If Mumbai fails to meet theserecommendations, the report concludes: it isin grave danger of collapsing completely(McKinsey, 2003:2). The concern is thatMumbai fails to deliver economic growth andquality of life to its citizens. As aconsequence the city fell from 24th place in1996 to 33rd place in 2000 in Asiaweeksranking of Asias top 40 cities. Mumbaisimply does not make the grade. The city

needs greater autonomy and a charismaticleader to steer the growth machine(McKinsey, 2003:30). To get Mumbai kick-started the McKinsey report suggests 23 so-called quick wins; targets which are visibleand attainable. Such quick-wins includetargets like world-class housing projects, aconvention centre, upgrade of thewaterfront, and beautification of the airportand surrounding area.

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There is, as the above indicates, anaspiration by MCGM to introduce a moreentrepreneurial approach to planning inMumbai with focus on aspects such aspublic-private partnerships, infrastructure tofacilitate the global economy, and image-creating projects to attract investments andtourism. In the following section I will look atthe case which represents the other half ofthe city: the informal Mumbai.

4.2 Pavement dwellers: the road towardsrecognition

As the following will show, the struggle forrecognition for the pavement dwellers hasbeen a long one. The official story began inthe 1986 when a group of women pavementdwellers got together and formed MahilaMilan, meaning Women Together in Hindi.The women were frustrated with the

continuous demolitions of their homes by theBombay Municipal Corporation (BMC). Thefamilies had arrived to Mumbai in the 1970sand established their homes along thepavements in the area called Byculla incentral Mumbai (see map, section 4.1).Pavement dwellers are different from otherslum dwellers in that they actually build theirhomes on pavements, rather than on vacantland. Approximately 27.000 households liveon the pavements in Mumbai (Burra, 2000),approximately 6000 households in Bycullaalone

8. Pavement dwellers in Byculla can

have very functional and orderly homes -approximately 2x2 meters with a floor loftadded for sleeping space. Typicallypavement dwellings are made fromrecycled, temporary materials such ascardboard and cloth, offering little privacyand protection from the weather:

For example, pavement dwellers inMumbai know how to take claim of a pieceof pavement and to build a house out ofnothing. But, as long as the city seeks todemolish these homes, they are forced touse temporary materials. Their annual

repair bill from the monsoon rains is almostequal to the annual repayment for a 20 yearloan on a dwelling several times bigger, but,at the end of it, they have only a pavementshack vulnerable to instant demolition.(Patel et al, no date, page 2)

Now, the women had an acute needto improve their housing situation but nomeans to do so. They lacked the financialresources, but also the belief that something

could actually be done. At this stage thepavement dwellers didnt exist in policy or inthe conscience of most citizens of Mumbai.Paradoxically, despite their visibility in thestreets, they remained invisible and lackedformal access to basic service provisionsuch as sanitation and electricity and theydidnt have access to subsidised food andfuel. One major obstacle was that thepavement dwellers were not granted theright to ration cards, which functions as anidentity card and gives access to manysocial rights such as schooling andsubsidised food. An NGO known asSPARC

9, formed by a group of social

workers, set out on a mission in 1984 toimprove the living conditions of the poorestof the poor - women pavement dwellers - byutilizing the skills and knowledge of the poorthemselves (Burra, 2000:8)

10. Along with

SPARC the women of Byculla graduallystarted exploring ways of improving theirliving conditions. This led the women to formMahila Milan in 1986; a savings group withthe immediate aim of improving theirhousing situation and to offer emergencycredit for food, hospital bills etc. A moresubtle, but important aim of the daily savingsrounds was also to build confidence withinthe community that something could bedone about their situation. The women alsocollected people -paraphrasing Jockin,leader of NSDF

11. The savings rounds

served as a way of building capacities andrelationships within the community (Burra,2000:7-8). Later on the savings did in factcontribute to a re-housing project, which iscurrently being realised - 20 years after thewomen got together to change their housingsituation. So far 80 of 536 families havemoved to permanent housing in an areacalled Milan Nagar, north of central Mumbai.

4.2.1 Breaking down institut ional wallsWhen facing authorities, the pavementdwellers

12often met prejudice about who

they were. One persistent misperceptionwas, for instance, that pavement dwellersare temporary. Another was that they do notcontribute to the city and its economy. Thislack of accurate knowledge led to completepolicy blindness towards pavement dwellersby the authorities. They simply werentconsidered worthy citizens, but asencroachers. Slum dwellers, for instance,had been given the right to appear on

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electoral rolls since 1976 and thus given theright to compensation if a public agencyneeded the land they lived on (Burra,2000:10). This right was not deemednecessary for pavement dwellers. Similarly,pavement dwellers were never included inany official census, for policy reason(Mohaptra, in Tandon and Mohanty2003:298; Burra,2000)

The Indian Constitution doespromise social, economic and politicalequality and opportunity and guarantees anumber of liberties to the citizens such asnon-discrimination on grounds of religion,caste, sex, race and equality of opportunityand abolition of untouchability. As such theconstitution is progressive as it includes thenotion of social justice in the sense thatinequality in status and opportunity is soughtto be diminished (Narayan, 2003:81-82). But

for the pavement dwellers it was not even amatter of just realising their substantivecitizenship - to begin with they werecompletely excluded from any kind of formalor substantive citizenship. As Tandon andMohanty, (2003:17) rightly point out, civilsociety operates within the system of rightsand freedoms granted by the state. If an act,for one reason or the other, is deemeduncivil, the doors are closing. But as theyalso point out, these boundaries are notfixed; they can be extended when the powerrelations between state and civil society are

challenged. This leads to Mohaptras point(2003:289) that a rigid conception of whatand whom civil society includes often leavesout too much or too little. Thus, he viewscivil society as a set of dynamic social andpolitical processes. This again relates toGaventa and Jones emphasis on activecitizenship. In a sense the active struggle forcitizenship started materialising when aparticipatory census was undertaken bySPARC and the pavement dwellers in 1985to make up for the invisibility. For instance itturned out that 13.5% of the heads of the

households were born in Mumbai, 60% ofhouseholds had been in Mumbai for over adecade, 6% for more than 4 decades and17% for about 3 decades (Burra, 2000:5,from We, the Invisible, SPARC, 1985). Thefindings formed a base with which togradually change the perception ofpavement dwellers being transitory and ofno value to the citys economy. Indeed thecensus, published by SPARC, did prove

many prejudices wrong and formed afoundation for changing perceptions andlater a change of policy. By counting peopleand putting the findings about them into apublication, We, the Invisible became animportant negotiation tool because it was atangible manifestation that the pavementdwellers did and do exist.

Similarly, MM, along with NSDF andSPARC, initiated a housing exhibition in1986. The aim of this exhibition was toabandon the idea of the poor as passivebeneficiaries. Instead the housing exhibitionsought to put the knowledge and skills of theslum and pavement dwellers on display tocreate a dialogue between the urban poorand government officials about how thingscould also be done. Thus, the exhibitionresulted in a full-scale model of what anideal house would look like for a pavement

dweller. Housing exhibitions, likeenumerations, have now become astandardized methodology of the Alliance(please see footnote 10) to create newspaces of knowledge about the urban poor.The methodology has been replicated bymany slum dwellers through out the world,creating a base for dialogue and policy-change (Burra, 1999b)

Still, it was not until 1995 thatpavement dwellers in Mumbai were grantedsome basic formal rights. This meant thatthey were recognised alongside slum

dwellers by the Slum Rehabilitation Authorityand entitled rights to resettlement orredevelopment of their homes, provided theyhad been registered on the electoral rolesince 1995. Even if the implementation ofthe policy was lacking (Burra, 2000), itopened a space for claiming and expandingsubstantive citizenship rights.

Now, what this brief summary of along struggle shows is that by activelyparticipating in how citizenship is defined inMumbai, the pavement dwellers havecontested their visibility in policy. Thus, the

achievement is remarkable because theyhave gone from being entirely disregardedand excluded to actually re-negotiating thecontent, extent and practice of both theformal and substantive aspects ofcitizenship in Mumbai. In the followingchapter I will look at how this struggle canbe interpreted within the theoreticalframework outlined in chapter one. The aimis to understand how the notion of the right

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to the city can be used to articulate a newdiscourse of citizenship.

5 ANALYSISTo bring out some of the key aspects of mycase, I will begin my analysis by using anexample of how the pavement dwellersrights were defended by an NGO in 1985.The NGO argued that the pavementdwellers had a constitutional right to live onthe pavements because evictions anddemolitions undermined their livelihood andthus their right to life. The case was taken tothe Supreme Court, which acknowledgedsome of the forces which drove thepavement dwellers to live on the pavements.But at the same time the verdict ordered thepavements cleared:

Footpaths or pavements are publicproperties, which are intended to serve the

convenience of the general public. They arenot laid for private use. If used for privatepurposes, they frustrate the very object forwhich they were carved out from portions ofpublic streets. (Tandon and Mohanty,2003:300)

The only tangible result gained from theSupreme Courts judgement was that theBombay Municipal Corporation wasinstructed to give the pavement dwellerssufficient notice prior to demolitions and toonly carry them out after the monsoon. But

as Burra (2000:9) notes, the well-meaningNGO ended up doing serious damage to thepavement dwellers. The important point isthat the pavement dwellers did not want tolive on the pavements. Their objective wasand still is to improve their housing situationalongside receiving recognition from thestate. This point was entirely missedbecause the pavement dwellers were neverconsulted about their experiences. Insteadthe judgement closed the doors for anyfurther interpretation of the pavementdwellers situation, the Supreme Court being

the highest court. What I want to point outwith this example is the importance of spaceas an analytical category when looking atways of claiming citizenship. With the caseof the Supreme Court, the pavementdwellers were dismissed because theyencroached on public space. Thisconceptualisation of space makes thedismissal very simple, despite thecomplexity of the situation. I will go on to

qualify this statement in the followingsection.

5.1 Insurgency as an everyday practiceThe aforementioned example touches uponthe complexity of the pavement dwellerssituation, which my analysis will hopefullyuncover. The pavement dwellers do notwant to live on the pavements. But inevitablyit has become a fact that they do live on thepavements. This is the outcome of a thornyset of circumstances, which is reflected inthe many layers of the city, ranging from thebuilt environment to the policy environmentsurrounding urban planning in Mumbai. Inthe following I want to look at how theeveryday practices of the pavement dwellerscan be interpreted in the theoretical contextoutlined in chapter 1.

Firstly I will look more closely at the

meaning of the everyday practices prior towhen the pavement dwellers startedmobilizing their voices through MM and the

Alliance. It is of course important to stressthat the living conditions did not changeovernight in 1985 and that for the majority ofpavement dwellers in Mumbai livingconditions remained dire. But the symbolicand practical meaning of the communitymobilization is important for the analysis. Asmentioned previously it seems a paradoxthat despite their visibility in public space,pavement dwellers remained invisible, at

least in terms of policy. The everydaypractice of the pavement dwellers was, andto a large extent still is, determined by theirhousing situation, i.e. the fact that theirdwellings are deemed illegal or at leastunwanted in the urban environment.

Appadurai argues:Housing- and its lack- set the stage

for the most public drama ofdisenfranchisement in Mumbai. In fact,housing can be argued to be the single mostcritical site of this citys politics of citizenship.(2002:28)

As mentioned previously this affects theiraccess to electricity, water etc and suchservices have to be acquired informally.Electricity for instance was bought on theinformal market until collaboration graduallywas set up with BEST, starting in 1995(Patel and Burra, 1999). Obtaining water isalso a serious difficulty. As Sagira says, a

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pavement dweller interviewed by MeeraBapat and Indu Agarwal (2003:73):

We have fixed a rate of 20 or 15rupees every month per family. These areunofficial taps. We cannot get taps officially.We have filled in forms so many times butthe municipality throws them away. There isno provision for giving water taps topavement dwellers.

My argument is that the fact the pavementdwellers are very visible in the urbanenvironment is strongly linked to the

justification of their invisibility in policy. Iwould now like to bring Lefebvres spatialtrialectics in play in order to gain a betterunderstanding of the relationship betweeneveryday practices and insurgency vis--visspatial visibility and invisibility in policy.

According to Lefebvres spatial theory there

is a dialectical relationship between his threeconcepts of space: conceived, perceivedand lived space. The pavements dwellerseveryday practice belongs in the sphere oflived spaces. But at the same time theirvisibility, or insurgency, contradicts thedomain of conceived space. As long aspavement dwellers are perceived asencroachers on public space and the city ingeneral, they are easily eradicated in policy.

Again this shows the dialectical nature ofspace when used as an analytical categoryin a lefebvrian conceptualisation. On one

hand existing policy13

doesnt recognise therights of pavement dwellers, which forcesthem to become encroachers. On the otherhand because they encroach this gives agreater incentive to remove them, becausethey dont fit the logic of the formal city andare easily dismissed as unworthy ofcitizenship rights.

James Holstons conceptualisationof insurgent citizenship equally focuses onthe everyday practices and livedexperiences of urban dwellers. Thesepractices and experiences are to a great

extent heterogeneous spaces, whichcontradict the normative and institutionaldefinitions of the state and its legal codes(Holston in Sandercock, 1998:52). Returningto the Supreme Court judgement from 1986,pavements are reserved for the generalpublic and not for private use. Thisstatement exemplifies very simply theconceptual policy framework within which anact is deemed un-civil. It is within this

context that insurgency is born. Therelationship between the heterogeneousspaces of insurgency and the boundaries ofnormative and institutional definitions isexactly dialectical, not a static form. Oneconditions the other. But the condition canbe of a positive or a negative character,meaning that the power relations betweenan insurgent act, and the boundaries whichdeem an act insurgent, are of anasymmetrical shape. I will investigate thisrelationship in the following section. LinkingLefebvres lived space and Holstons spacesof insurgent citizenship, the pavementdwellers, I would argue, inscribe themselveswithin these concepts by the mere fact thatthey live on the pavements. But these on theother hand are not emancipated acts; theyare acts of survival in an oppressing urbanspace, because the one important lesson

learned from the Supreme Court judgementwas that the pavement dwellers dont wantto be on the pavements. Thus, as a startingpoint, their acts of insurgency were and stil lare articulated spatially by their dwellings onthe pavements; occupying public space.This level of insurgency is then what I havechosen to call lived space as a spatialnecessity. In the following I will look at howthe everyday practices and experiences ofthe pavement dwellers were turned into aspatial strategy.

5.2 Insurgency as a spatial strategyWhat I want to do in this section is to look athow the pavement dwellers managed to turntheir everyday experiences into an active,symbolic space, which then served as aspatial strategy to negotiate how they wereperceived in policy.

While still living on the pavements ofByculla, MM and SPARC decided in 1985 toundertake a participatory census of thepavement dwellers (We, the Invisible). Thishad been avoided by the BMC for policyreasons, as mentioned previously. What

this meant was, that by avoiding an officialenumeration of the pavements dwellers,they simply remained invisible in policy andtheir visibility in the urban environmentremained at the status of encroachers.Thus, their presence remained controversial.The enumeration initiated by SPARC andMM took this spatial controversy of thepavement dwellers and turned it into anegotiating tool. By finding out just how

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many people lived in the area of Byculla,what they did, where they came from, whattheir aspirations were and so on, a steptowards a legitimate claim of the space theyhad appropriated was made, because asMcFarlane (2004: 896) argues, citizenship ismarked through geographies of inclusionand exclusion. This enumeration was a steptowards creating a geography of inclusion, inspatial as well as more abstract terms. Itcreated a statistical entity, which could beused to negotiate with authorities, but couldalso be used internally to raise a collectivevoice and identity. The latter wasstrengthened and explored through dailysavings schemes, which sought to buildfinancial and organisational capacity withinthe community of pavement dwellers.

14

Lister qualifies active citizenship asnot only having the capacity to act as a

citizen, but also, as a prerequisite, a senseof agency that one can act (Lister inGaventa and Jones, 2002:6). This approachto citizenship is relevant in the analyticalcontext. When looking at the symbolicmeaning of the enumeration, We, theInvisible can be interpreted as an act ofinsurgency. By insisting on their rightfulpresence in Mumbai, the pavementdwellers, although still controversial, startedpushing the boundaries of whom the citybelongs to. I would argue that throughinsurgent practices such as the

enumeration, the sense of agency, whichLister mentions, is created. This is whentheir appropriation of urban space becomesa spatial strategy. Their visibility; their livedspaces, become a way of negotiating. AsMcFarlane (2004:910) notes, the strategy ofthe Alliance is: not to radically change thelong-term politics of private and state-interests, though it is radically attempting torenegotiate the power between these bodiesand the poor. As mentioned in the previoussection, this power relation is oftenasymmetrical. When inserting practices of

insurgency as a way of expressing activecitizenship into Lefebvres lived spaces, thisechoes his dialectical perception of space. Itechoes change, because the sense ofagency created amongst pavement dwellersdirectly and practically challenges how thecity they occupy is both perceived andconceived. This in other words changespower relations. One example could be howMM negotiated with BEST to have them

deliver electricity to the pavements. In thisinstance, the pavement dwellers censusdata was used to inform a new methodologywithin BEST - at first BESTs ownprocedures and methodologies were usedas a reason why they should not provide thepavement dwellers with electricity (Riley andBurra, 1999:11). Gradually, BEST and thepavement dwellers were won over through amutual learning process, which opened adoor to further exploration. Power relationswere in this case changed and the result isthat BEST has indeed changed its policiestowards pavements dwellers. Thus, thepavements dwellers acts of insurgency arecharacterized by negotiation rather thanprotest. I would then argue that this level ofinsurgency moves from Holstons moreethnographical approach to insurgentcitizenship to that of Friedmanns, which is

concerned with turning over nautonomousforces. This may seem contradictory toFriedmanns objective, which ultimately is tochange underlying structural causes toinjustice (2002:84). But as Friedmann alsostates, the struggle against structuralinjustice through insurgent practice takesplace at all scales and seeks to increasespaces of political participation. Even if the

Alliance doesn't at the outset aspire tochange the world, it does aspire to changemany worlds

15. The Alliance itself talks

about setting precedence, which bears

resemblance with Holstons notion ofinsurgency:

() urban poor groups had to beable to claim, capture, define and refine theirown ways of doing things (designing andbuilding a house, developing their owndetailed map for upgrading, developing acommunity-managed toilet) in spaces theyalready controlled and then use these toshow city officials and external agencies thatthese are precedents that are worthinvesting in. This gives legitimacy to thechanges that the poor want to bring into a

city strategy or a development project.(dCruz and Satterthwaite, 2004:52)

The point to be made here is that insurgentpractices such as undertaking anenumeration and housing exhibitions have,in the case of the pavement dwellers, beenproven to activate a sense of agency, whichhas then been used as a knock on effect toeventually change the living conditions of

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many pavement and slum dwellers inMumbai and elsewhere. I argue that thistype of insurgency - using lived spaces as aspatial strategy - goes beyond ethnographicaccounts of alternative plannings, becauseit seeks strategically to change the powerrelations of the game - which may then be astep towards actually changing the rules ofthe game.

5.3 The right to the citySo how does the above link to a broaderdebate of citizenship? I have chosen to useLefebvres notion of the right to the city inorder to understand how the concept ofcitizenship could potentially be expressed.The case of the pavement dwellers placesthe citizenship agenda within a relevantcontext of cities as the primary arena forarticulating new forms of citizenship in an

era of globalisation. My argument is that it isthrough the lived spaces that the right to thecity can be asserted. Lefebvre does notexplicitly give an account for how theempowerment of the urban inhabitant is totake place. I therefore find the notion of

insurgent citizenship an interesting way oflooking at how everyday spatial practicesand manipulations can potentially lead to anew discourse of citizenship- the right to thecity.

Now, the essence of the right to thecity is the right to urban life, defined as theright to appropriation and participation.These two elements are reflected in bothFriedmanns as well as Holstonsconceptualisation of insurgent citizenship.The spaces of insurgency or the livedspaces link up to the discussion aboutcitizenship precisely because they negotiatewhat the notion of citizenship actuallyentails. Within this negotiation is entailed thestruggle over the right to appropriation andthe right to participation. Following thediagram outlined below I want to summarizethese different elements and look at how

they could potentially make up for areframing of citizenship. This will beillustrated further by returning to my casestudy about Mumbai and the pavementdwellers in Byculla throughout the analysis.

The right to the city

Participation Appropriation

Citizenship

Insurgent practice

Everyday practice

Lived space as a

spatial necessity

Spatial strategy

Lived space as aspatial strategy

Agency

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As I have attempted to show in thediagram above and my analysis in previoussections is that there are two levels ofinsurgent practice in play. One is the level ofthe everyday practice and experiences,

where insurgency is articulated as a spatialnecessity. This is reflected in how in thiscase the pavement dwellers are treated inpolicy. As mentioned previously thepavement dwellers were in the outsetdisregarded, both as citizens and as a partof civil society. At the heart at this is theirhousing situation. It gives the everydaypractices a prevailing character ofinsurgency as a matter of survival. The livedspaces of the pavement dwellers are thusvery much defined in terms of externaloppression. There is a wide gap betweenformal and substantive citizenship, whichstems from flaws in policy as well as flaws inhow the pavement dwellers are perceived.

As the pavement dweller Sagira notes insection 5.1, she is not entitled to claim awater tap - even if she in principle lives ongovernment owned land and should begranted the right under the Slum Areas Act(Bapat, Agarwal. 2003:72). Thus the lack offormal, substantive and active citizenshipleaves no overlapping sphere between theinsurgent practices and the right to the cityas a way of articulating a framework forcitizenship. The pavement dwellers have

appropriated the urban space as a necessityand prior to 1985 they had very little politicaland civil room to participate as citizens inhow their city was taking shape.

My argument is that a sense ofagency was initially spurred by theparticipatory enumeration. This was a crucialstep towards turning the pavement dwellerssituation into what I then call a spatialstrategy. By taking this step, the notion ofcitizenship was gradually negotiated by thepavement dwellers spatial appropriation andparticipation. Thus the lived spaces were

turned into strategic spaces for changing thepolicy framework the pavement dwellershave to survive within. The ultimate resultof this spatial strategy was when the firstpavement dwellers moved to permanenthousing in Milan Nagar. This remarkableevent literally turned the whole situationupside-down. From being pavementdwellers they moved to permanent housingand became citizens with rights and

duties.16

It is important to note that thespatial appropriation this project representswas conditioned by the pavement dwelthemselves. Therefore one can view this asan event when the pavement dwellers

successfully claimed their right to the city.

lers

The establishment of the right to thecity within new discourses of citizenship thatare formally articulated is a long way off. Asoutlined in the introduction the officialMumbai is very eager to promote itself as aglobal player. Within this ambition lies anobvious contradiction, given the fact thatmore than half of Mumbais population live inslums. Mumbais urban condition simplyposes a substantial challenge for futureplanning. The pavement dwellersexperiences show that citizenship is not astatic category; it needs to be challenged -what does it mean to be a citizen incontemporary cities? Using Lefebvresnotion, the right to the city entails not onlythe right to the city in physical terms, butalso in social, economic, environmental andpolitical terms. When Vision Mumbai seeksto eliminate slums from the map, I wouldargue that this ambition is not motivated bythe above-mentioned logic of the right to thecity. It stems from the logic of the global,entrepreneurial city, where slums dont fitthe picture. The question then is how theentrepreneurial city fits the picture of the

other Mumbai? It seems that there is adiscrepancy between the two. But it is alsowithin these two contrasting images of thecity that forgotten citizens such as thepavement dwellers have to expand theirroom for manoeuvre. Using the city as thelocus for where and how citizenship isdefined turns the story on its head. In thecase of the pavement dwellers it has provenfruitful to claim their right to the city. Even ifformal citizenship applies in Mumbai, andIndia for that matter, this has provedinefficient in securing substantial citizenship

for a majority of its citizens. ParaphrasingYoung, difference does make a difference,and in this case the pavement dwellersdifficult housing situation is an outcome ofexactly this oppressing environment, whichranges from policy level to the builtenvironment. The right to the city is thus afruitful way of articulating a new discourse ofcitizenship, because it takes seriously theinsurgency implied in the everyday

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What Holston and Friedmannsuggest by their notion of insurgentcitizenship is that the city is not a neutralcontainer, but a political space in whichmeaning of citizenship is daily contested.Within the concepts of political andcontestation is also implied a challenge ofpower relations. When coupling insurgentcitizenship with Lefebvres spatial theory,and in particular the notion of lived spaces,power relations are uncovered andalternative routes are suggested. But tobring the insurgent practices to the level of aspatial strategy and to utilize thesealternative routes, a sense of agency isrequired. The pavement dwellers havemanaged to take this leap and turn theirposition in urban space into a negotiationtool.

experiences of those struggling to claim theirrights. It is an active manifestation of thepotential and the hope that the city alsoencapsulates. Ideally the right to the city asa fully enacted citizenship conception woulddissolve insurgent practices as suggested inthe diagram.

CONCLUSIONThe objective of this paper was to explorethe notion of the right the city as a way ofarticulating a framework for citizenship. In asense this paper was also an attempt tobring attention to the myriad of everydayactivities taking place in cities throughout theworld. At the heart of the paper and itsresearch questions is the paradox thatmillions of people live and work in cities yetstill they are regarded as intruders. They arethe forgotten citizens and yet they are so

visible. There is an idea that Mumbai will bea global city on the same level as Shanghaiin 10-15 years. It seems utterly bizarre whenconfronted with the chaos of Mumbai. I amsure that the chaos is somehow organized,but it certainly isnt organized by the logic ofa neat global city, with a picturesqueharbour front and convention centres. This isnot to romanticize the life of the 5-6 millionslum dwellers in Mumbai. For far too manypeople in the South and in the North, life is adire daily struggle. My errand was to try tosuggest an alternative way of conceiving the

lives of these people. Rather than looking atcities as an exclusive entity, maybe the citycould be re-conceptualised to encompass avariety of experiences and ways of living.Lefebvres notion of the right to the city is tome a promising way of articulating aninclusive framework for citizenship, givingvoice to a multiplicity of experiences andthereby creating diverse spaces forparticipation.

By employing a theoretical

exploration of how the notion of citizenshipcan be reframed my hope was not to give arecipe for claiming the right to the city. Mypoint is that the obvious scale of thechallenge - how to improve the intolerableliving conditions of millions of slum dwellersaround the world - calls for a debate aboutthe role of citizenship in the process ofcreating equitable cities. The debate goeson at an institutional level, for instance whenUNESCO discussed the right to the city atthe World Urban Forum in 2006. On theeveryday level the struggle continues, both

for survival and for claims to citizenship.Insurgency implies opposition and challengeto existing power relations, which are difficultto turn over. Still, the pavement dwellershave shown one way of turning oppressioninto opportunity and have thus served in thisinstance as a way of exemplifying how theright to the city can be claimed.

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Spaces of Insurgent Citizenship