Marginal urban claims to the city in emerging versus peripheral economies

This paper examines the contingent ability of peripheral urban mobilizations to challenge the social and economic effects of neoliberal state policies through a comparison of marginal urban claims to land. It focuses, more particularly, on the construction of urban collective subjects and mobilizations in the peripheral economy of Bolivia and in the emerging economy of South Africa. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cochabamba, Bolivia and Johannesburg, South Africa, we compare the ways that national approaches to positioning its urban land markets within international economic contexts shapes possibilities and limits of marginal claims to the city.

In Bolivia, the relationship between formal and informal land markets allows for peripheral urban groups to claim legitimacy of their right to self-administer and manage their basic services. In South Africa, in contrast, the urban poor's claims to basic services is made in the context of state policies that seek private investments to support the expansion of housing and service delivery in the country's growing cities. The resulting disinvestment in poor neighborhoods is combined with an articulation of claims through universalized political rights. The consequent dependence on the state weakens the vigorous collective identities and actions that emerged through during the anti-apartheid struggle. In contrast, Bolivia's periurban residents' claims to the city draw on indigenous social movement discourse that claims the validity of customary rights alongside the universality of rights. This paper explores these themes as it identifies the ways that states' attempts to position themselves in the global economy intersect with national dynamics of social organization to shape local urban struggles.