‘I Don't Like My Children to Grow up in this Bad Area’: Parental Anxieties about Living in Informal Settlements

A growing body of research on informal settlements considers the experiences of children, but seldom outlines the daily parenting experiences of adult men and women. At the same time, policy on housing in South Africa points to the ways in which the ‘eradication’ of informal housing will help provide children with better futures. This article explores the social relation of parenting within an informal settlement in Durban, South Africa, bearing in mind the broader difficulties of parenting in poverty, and points to ways in which the material qualities of informal settlements contribute to feelings of anxiety in parents. It questions how these experiences might differ from or be similar to those of parents who live in generic contexts of poverty (but not necessarily informality). It concludes ultimately that living in an informal settlement does actually contribute to particular parental anxieties, but that there is no guarantee that informal housing eradication will remove these concerns

Lived experiences of state housing in South Africa's cities: Johannesburg and Durban

A focus on the lived experiences of beneficiaries of South Africa's main housing programme reveals its diverse results, which challenge more straightforward readings of it in either largely positive or largely negative terms. Incorporating specific findings from previous studies in the metropolitan areas of Johannesburg and Durban, the paper explores a range of emotions, experiences and effects of the housing benefit across three dimensions: first, beneficiaries’ interactions with their housing; second, gendered experiences; and third, citizenship practices. Discussing different aspects of the lived experience of the housing sheds light on the effects of policy on people’s lives, helping to refine and distinguish multiple facets of an often unqualified and limited portrayal of the housing ‘beneficiary’. These complex, and at times conflicting, inscriptions, impressions and effects are read against particular socio-economic contexts. Outcomes reveal some sense of inclusion at the same time that wider patterns of inequality persist, to a large extent echoing Anand and Rademacher’s (2011) analyses of public housing initiatives in Mumbai

Men’s experiences of state sponsored housing in South Africa: Emerging issues and key questions

In South African cities, millions of men and women living informally, are being rehoused through the state-directed provision of formal houses to poor beneficiaries. This intervention is reshaping their lives, and innovatively targets beneficiaries with dependents, where over half are women (RSA 2014). Aiming to redress the historical context of gendered inequality in housing ownership, and house the very poor, these policy and implementation changes necessarily impact on men in terms of their power, resources and employment but in complex ways including positive and negative. The home remains significant for many men’s desires for authority and identity. Using the lens of masculinity, this paper considers the ways in which men are experiencing this housing intervention, revealing a complex mix of outcomes in terms of their sense of identity, their relationships and their financial pressures and income generation. It draws on empirical work in South Africa to illuminate the importance of focusing on men in relation to housing and offers key questions for future research

Lived experiences of state housing in South Africa's cities: Johannesburg and Durban

A focus on the lived experiences of beneficiaries of South Africa's main housing programme reveals its diverse results, which challenge more straightforward readings of it in either largely positive or largely negative terms. Incorporating specific findings from previous studies in the metropolitan areas of Johannesburg and Durban, the paper explores a range of emotions, experiences and effects of the housing benefit across three dimensions: first, beneficiaries’ interactions with their housing; second, gendered experiences; and third, citizenship practices. Discussing different aspects of the lived experience of the housing sheds light on the effects of policy on people’s lives, helping to refine and distinguish multiple facets of an often unqualified and limited portrayal of the housing ‘beneficiary’. These complex, and at times conflicting, inscriptions, impressions and effects are read against particular socio-economic contexts. Outcomes reveal some sense of inclusion at the same time that wider patterns of inequality persist, to a large extent echoing Anand and Rademacher’s (2011) analyses of public housing initiatives in Mumbai

Informal housing, gender, crime and violence: the role of design in urban South Africa

Violence and crime in countries such as South Africa are shaped by deep socio-economic inequalities, however, the spatial designs of urban areas and housing also play a role, but often in differing ways. There is little qualitatively-derived research published on the design realities of poor informal housing where the hyper-permeability of housing structures directly shapes residents’ experiences of crime, often in gendered ways. This paper speaks to the wider literature on Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED), and applauds its recognition of the role of wider social factors in shaping crime and prevention, arguing that socio-political factors are critical too in the South African case. However this paper calls for a fuller analysis of the particular material and design realities of informal housing, realities which are ever-present across the global South, which in practice can undermine efforts towards target hardening. Key words: informal housing, design, violence, gender, South Afric

Gendered il/legalities of housing formalisation in India and South Africa

Urban interventions, such as state-led housing provision in India and South Africa, establish new legal landscapes for urban residents (formerly slum/informal dwellers), who become home owners, legal occupiers of spaces, ratespayers and visible citizens although not in ways that are necessarily contingent. These material-legal processes are also acutely gendered underscoring wider calls for a feminist approach to legal geographies. Informed by a comparative empirically driven study, this paper explores how in both contexts, urban interventions work to enhance gender equality through improving women’s material shelter in the city, and introduce tenure security, often prioritising very poor women. Yet, their implementation is riddled with slippages as well as operating within a broader poverty–patriarchy nexus. This means that these legally framed benefits have occurred alongside complex and perverse outcomes including unemployment, gendered tensions and acute loss of privacy for some. Housing interventions produce uneven legal geographies, with persisting gendered inequalities and poverty distorting residents’ abilities to benefit from material-legal interventions aimed at improving their lives