The State’s Double-Bind Dilemma: The Reproduction of Informal Urbanizations through Housing Policy Targeting Techniques
Informal settlements have been privileged sites for targeting poor populations. Thus, informality has been depicted as driven either by poverty or by residents’ expectation of accessing to public housing, as two exclusionary motivations to move to an informal settlement. While poverty is regarded as a legitimate motivation to squat, the expectation of becoming homeowner through state subsidies is not, reproducing the well-known distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor.
Building upon Foucault’s (1991) theory of governmentality, this article argues that these two drivers of housing informality are built into the housing policy’s architecture for low-income groups. This research examines how governmental techniques designed to target the urban poor beneficiaries of the housing policy, are entwined with informal resident’s practices that respond to targeting techniques. It shows that the State’s attempts to target only “poor” populations have had the unintended effect of channeling low-income residents into informal settlements. This research shows the double-bind dilemma the State has created. On one hand, it has reinforced targeting mechanisms to expand access to housing for “poor” populations, and on the other, this drive towards more efficient targeting has had a reproductive effect over informal urbanizations. By making themselves visible and legible as “poor”, informal residents enable themselves as beneficiaries of housing subsidies and regain their dignity as deserving citizens of the State’s welfare.