In Search of Home Citizenship, Law and the Politics of the Poor

"This book examines the politics of the poor focusing on law, citizenship and gender in a new space of urban poverty - rehabilitation housing. Challenging the assumption that illegalities emerge due to lack of legal rights to property, this study reveals how the rehabilitated poor come to experience 'citizenship in limbo', suspended between illegal and legal residence. Examining state practices of allotment and management of rehabilitation housing, it reveals the diverse ways in which illegalities are enabled by the state, allowing for flexible governance and control over housing. It reveals the processes through which systemic corruption is reinforced and urban poor movements de-radicalised and relegated to mobilising for subsidised homes. This work reveals how the practice of such politics is deeply gendered, both in terms of the roles women occupy and the manner in which they are represented in negotiations with the state. It thus provides crucial insights into the nature of political work performed by men and women and how this structures engagements with the state. Rather than to celebrate such politics as democracy or negate it as producing clientelism and dependency, this work argues for an analytical stance that recognises both possibilities of molecular change through normative practices and the impossibility of a radical systemic change"--