Bottom-up Social Infrastructures in Settlement-Making: Case Study from Lahore

This contribution will draw on longer-term empirical fieldwork in a low-income settlement in Pakistan’s Lahore to focus on two interrelated dimensions of social infrastructure: First, the settlement process will be traced. It is not linear but characterized by progress and setbacks due to adverse policies by contesting land claimants and owners on the one hand and respective repeated steps to establish basic infrastructure on the other. Social infrastructure here comprises especially common buildings of congregation, e.g. a gurdwara, church or mosques, but also service infrastructure, such as sewage and electricity connections. Second, drawing on Simone's notion of “people as infrastructure,” the analysis focuses on how a specific (un)settlement process at the margins depends on social capital. However, in extension of Simone’s understanding of infrastructure made up of people through horizontal ties, the analysis clearly points to the necessity of having a mixture of both horizontal and vertical ties to employ patrons, seek protection from eviction and thus ensure mid-term settlement. Vertical alliances and operations constitute a relevant component of claim-making and political mobilization besides horizontal networks based on ethnicity, kinship, and religion. (In)Justice is countered through people-to-people support in ad hoc social coalitions of the residents that reflect a moral positionality and community ethic of the low-income dwellers. At the same time, the community is not homogeneous but power-hierarchies exist and destabilize the performance of a joint moral positionality around the establishment of tangible social infrastructure. The contribution reflects on power-hierarchies and (in)justice in low-income settlement contexts of the Global South and the two-dimensional role of social infrastructures in settlement processes that continue to be fragile. The case study draws on ethnographic data collected during several fieldwork research stays between 2012 and 2017 through informal and in-depth interviews with dwellers, neighbours, and local public representatives including from urban development authorities.