IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i2p1009-d483331.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Migrants’ Narratives on Urban Governance: A Case from Kolkata, a City of the Global South

Author

Listed:
  • Anuradha Chakrabarti

    (Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, WB 721302, India
    School of Design and Build Environment, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6945, Australia)

  • Reena Tiwari

    (School of Design and Build Environment, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6945, Australia)

  • Haimanti Banerji

    (Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, WB 721302, India)

Abstract

The paper aims to reveal the politics of urban governance and the associated impact on the lives of disenfranchised migrants. It critically explores the urban governance structure and the nature of practices involved in the cycle of settlement, eviction, resistance and resettlement. The case of Nonadanga, located at the urban margin of Kolkata, India, was explored for this purpose. An ethnographic methodology comprising observation, semi-structured interviews and oral history was adopted for the research. Twelve squatter dwellers and four experts working in Nonadanga and Kolkata were interviewed for this purpose. A three-step data analysis comprising a narrative approach, thematic network analysis and validation was adopted. A critical review of inclusive practices, together with ethnographic survey findings, demonstrates that migrants live in a condition the paper calls “partial rights”, which is a manifestation of the dialectics of inclusiveness practiced by the urban governance structure and derived from the interaction between urban governance structure and migrants’ agency. By analyzing past development trends, the paper outlines possible future scenarios for migrants’ living conditions and discusses their impact on achieving the targeted Sustainable Development Goal 11 for inclusive cities by 2030.

Suggested Citation

  • Anuradha Chakrabarti & Reena Tiwari & Haimanti Banerji, 2021. "Migrants’ Narratives on Urban Governance: A Case from Kolkata, a City of the Global South," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-16, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:2:p:1009-:d:483331
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/1009/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/1009/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fatmaelzahraa Hussein & John Stephens & Reena Tiwari, 2020. "Memory for Social Sustainability: Recalling Cultural Memories in Zanqit Alsitat Historical Street Market, Alexandria, Egypt," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-20, October.
    2. Solomon Benjamin, 2008. "Occupancy Urbanism: Radicalizing Politics and Economy beyond Policy and Programs," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 719-729, September.
    3. Tavares, Rodrigo, 2016. "Paradiplomacy: Cities and States as Global Players," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780190462123.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marcellus Forh Mbah & Linda A. East, 2022. "How Can “Community Voices” from Qualitative Research Illuminate Our Understanding of the Implementation of the SDGs? A Scoping Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-15, February.
    2. Lawrence W. C. Lai & K. W. Chau, 2022. "Land Surveying and Squatting," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-11, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chandan Deuskar, 2020. "Informal urbanisation and clientelism: Measuring the global relationship," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(12), pages 2473-2490, September.
    2. Monika Streule & Ozan Karaman & Lindsay Sawyer & Christian Schmid, 2020. "Popular Urbanization: Conceptualizing Urbanization Processes Beyond Informality," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 652-672, July.
    3. Michał Dulak, 2023. "Contribution of subnational authorities to multilateralism from the EU perspective—Implementation of the SDGs," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 14(S2), pages 13-21, March.
    4. Gustav Sundqvist & Björn Jerdén, 2024. "Paradiplomacy and international conflict: disengagement from China by Swedish local governments," Asia Europe Journal, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 313-332, September.
    5. Nikita Sud, 2020. "The Unfixed State of Unfixed Land," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 51(5), pages 1175-1198, September.
    6. Tom Gillespie, 2020. "The Real Estate Frontier," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 599-616, July.
    7. Kristian Hoelscher, 2016. "The evolution of the smart cities agenda in India," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 28-44, March.
    8. Malini Ranganathan, 2014. "Paying for Pipes, Claiming Citizenship: Political Agency and Water Reforms at the Urban Periphery," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 590-608, March.
    9. Dawson, Katherine, 2021. "Under the wire: splintered time and ongoing temporariness in Accra’s electropolis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108572, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Mukhametov, Ruslan (Мухаметов, Руслан), 2022. "PARADIPLOMACY OF RUSSIAN REGIONS: FEATURES AND LIMITATIONS (as illustrated by the Sverdlovsk region) [Парадипломатия Российских Регионов: Возможности И Ограничения (На Примере Свердловской Области)," Sotsium i vlast / Society and power, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, pages 26-36.
    11. Harshavardhan Jatkar, 2024. "BODIES AGAINST MODERNITY: Politics of Slum Rehabilitations in India," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 111-125, January.
    12. Tahire Erman, 2016. "Formalization by the State, Re-Informalization by the People: A Gecekondu Transformation Housing Estate as Site of Multiple Discrepancies," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(2), pages 425-440, March.
    13. Alexis Roig & Jia Liang Sun-Wang & Juan-Luis Manfredi-Sánchez, 2020. "Barcelona’s science diplomacy: towards an ecosystem-driven internationalization strategy," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-9, December.
    14. Dekel, Tomer & Meir, Avinoam & Alfasi, Nurit, 2019. "Formalizing infrastructures, civic networks and production of space: Bedouin informal settlements in Be'er-Sheva metropolis," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 91-99.
    15. Ijlal Naqvi, 2018. "Contesting access to power in urban Pakistan," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(6), pages 1242-1256, May.
    16. Hanna Hilbrandt, 2019. "Everyday urbanism and the everyday state: Negotiating habitat in allotment gardens in Berlin," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(2), pages 352-367, February.
    17. Ludovic Halbert & Hortense Rouanet, 2014. "Filtering Risk Away: Global Finance Capital, Transcalar Territorial Networks and the (Un)Making of City-Regions: An Analysis of Business Property Development in Bangalore, India," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(3), pages 471-484, March.
    18. Rebecka Ericsdotter Engstrom & David Collste & Sarah E. Cornell & Francis X Johnson & Henrik Carlsen & Fernando Jaramillo & Goran Finnveden & Georgia Destouni & Mark Howells & Nina Weitz & Viveka Palm, 2020. "Succeeding at home and abroad -- Accounting for the international spillovers of cities' SDG actions," Papers 2012.14153, arXiv.org.
    19. Gavin Shatkin, 2014. "Contesting the Indian City: Global Visions and the Politics of the Local," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 1-13, January.
    20. Seth Schindler, 2014. "Producing and contesting the formal/informal divide: Regulating street hawking in Delhi, India," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(12), pages 2596-2612, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:2:p:1009-:d:483331. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.