Displaced, Resettled, and then? Lived Experiences of Non-Occupancy and Secondary Residential Mobility

In the context of global campaigns like ‘cities without slums’, large-scale, state-subsidized housing and resettlement programmes have experienced a renaissance. While proclaiming the provision of new, formal homes that would enable so-called beneficiaries to lead a life in dignity, among scholars these programmes provoke justified concerns whether they miss their target groups. Unaffordability and a lack of choice, peripheral locations, and under-serviced sites are commonly cited concerns.

Eventually, many subsidized units – sometimes up to 70% – are not occupied by intended recipients. Most authors see this as a form of gentrification or downward-raiding, whereby higher income groups again displace intended recipients towards poor-quality housing elsewhere. However, most research misses to include perspectives of those who do not occupy their units – mainly because of methodical challenges to follow people to disperse locations. Consequently, little information exists about the reasons, directions, and experiences of secondary residential mobility of ‘the missing people’ of state-subsidized housing and resettlement programmes. Where do they move, why do they leave? How can we conceive the effects of housing provision on the lives of displaced dwellers who do not or no longer inhabit their units? Might secondary mobility be a step towards a dignified life elsewhere or rather the undesired result of undignified resettlement spaces?

This comparative study on three of the most significant housing programmes in Africa analysed 101 housing pathways of people who rent out or sold their housing units in the capital regions of Ethiopia, Morocco, and South Africa. Rejecting a unilateral notion of downward-raiding, I suggest a renewed conceptual perspective that sees people, who do not occupy their received housing units, as active subjects that reconfigure supply-driven, shelter-centric housing policy according to their own demands, while at the same time being affected by (severe) financial constraints and social pressures.