InfUr Emerging Scholar Series 2021 -- Chester Arcilia, Ph.D.-- Un-homing the Urban Poor, Philippines
Channel: Tanzil Shafique
Date: 2021-05-10

Un-homing the Urban Poor: Socialized Housing, Displacements and Subaltern Resistances in the Philippines

In this presentation, I explicate the political-economy of the Philippine socialised housing program and its implications on subaltern resistances. The socialised housing program provides the relocation required legally for evictions of informal settlements. Compelling slum dwellers to purchase unlivable and unaffordable housing in remote peri-urban sites, the program privatises profits, socialises risks and costs, and curtails democratic participation. Urban subalterns respond with diverse resistances ranging from quiet encroachment to an Occupy movement. Here, quiet encroachment for in-city home-remaking after evictions requires the break up of families, negotiations with slum gatekeepers and community support. Many slum communities have also countered with people’s planning for on-site upgrading or near-site resettlement, achieving some success with the support of allied NGOs and state ‘champions.’ However, the people’s plans are constrained by the limits of housing subsidies and often excluded the poorer slum dwellers. In 2017, a progressive coalition of urban poor groups enacted one of the largest empty socialised housing takeovers in the Global South. This occupation may signal a shift from defensive anti-eviction protests and barricades to an offensive strategy for urban resource redistribution in the Philippines.

April 28, 2021 
at Informal Urbanism Research Hub, University of Melbourne