Land conflict in peri-urban areas: Exploring the effects of land reform on informal settlement in Mexico

Peri-urban areas are often subject to intensive construction, through both formal and informal processes. As land transitions from rural to urban status, different land tenure and administration systems may come into conflict, leading to disputes, contestation and, in some cases, violence. However, little is known about the precise causes of peri-urban land conflict. In Mexico, peri-urban growth has historically proceeded peacefully, owing to the control exerted by a corporatist system of government, and the political use of land tenure regularisation. However, the effects of land reforms on transactions at the peri-urban fringe, in the context of wider processes of liberalisation, may be increasing vulnerability to conflict over land. This paper explores these issues through a case study of an irregular settlement on the peri-urban fringe of the provincial Mexican city of Xalapa, where contestations over informally developed land have escalated into violent encounters between groups of settlers and the state. The findings show that vulnerability to conflict in peri-urban areas can be attributed to the interaction of macro-level processes with local-level factors, including diverse claims, overlapping legal and governance frameworks and, critically, local power relations

Constructing ordinary places: Place-making in urban informal settlements in Mexico

Observers from a variety of disciplines agree that informal settlements account for the majority of housing in many cities of the global South. Urban informal settlements, usually defined by certain criteria such as self-build housing, sub-standard services, and residents’ low incomes, are often seen as problematic, due to associations with poverty, irregularity and marginalisation. In particular, despite years of research and policy, gaps in urban theory and limited understandings of urban informal settlements mean that they are often treated as outside ‘normal’ urban considerations, with material effects for residents including discrimination, eviction and displacement. In response to these considerations, this article uses a place-making approach to explore the spatial, social and cultural construction of place in this context, in order to unsettle some of the assumptions underlying discursive constructions of informal settlements, and how these relate to spatial and social marginalisation. Research was carried out using a qualitative, ethnographic methodology in two case study neighbourhoods in Xalapa, Mexico. Mexico offers fertile ground to explore these issues. Despite an extensive land tenure regularisation programme, at least 60 per cent of urban dwellers live in colonias populares, neighbourhoods with informal characteristics. The research found that local discourses reveal complex and ambivalent views of colonias populares, which both reproduce and undermine marginalising tendencies relating to ‘informality’. A focus on residents’ own place-making activities hints at prospects for rethinking urban informal settlements. By capturing the messy, dynamic and contextualised processes that construct urban informal settlements as places, the analytical lens of place-making offers a view of the multiple influences which frame them. Informed by perspectives from critical social geography which seek to capture the ‘ordinary’ nature of cities, this article suggests imagining urban informal settlements differently, in order to re-evaluate their potential contribution to the city as a whole