ABSTRACT
This chapter unpacks informal urbanization in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and explains the current limited action space for the city’s most marginalized residents to enter Sudan’s political realm. In acknowledgment of the complexities underlying urban informality in postcolonial cities, the chapter begins by addressing the multifaceted nature of urban informality in the context of the non-democratic Sudanese polity, highlighting the main drivers and characteristics of informal urbanization, as well as the specific spatial manifestations of urban socio-spatial exclusion in Khartoum.
The chapter focuses on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), who are the most vulnerable and marginalized segment of Khartoum’s informal dwellers. Decades of failed urban planning approaches, coupled with the state’s politicized oppressive attitude and control-based responses to informality, have led to protracted marginality that is preventing IDPs from claiming any right to the city. In the absence of the requisite policies and institutions, IDPs realize the repressive political realities that govern their daily struggles and forcibly construct their life narratives. The chapter highlights how, with the exception of a few cases in which IDPs litigated against the state through international bodies for human rights, the prevailing attitude towards informal settlements has resulted in a state of paralyzed collective agency, which is preventing IDPs, as well as the growing population of urban poor in Khartoum, from fruitfully pursuing their positive and negative rights. Nevertheless, this chapter attempts to conclude on a hopeful note, drawing attention to how the mere urban presence of IDPs, the majority of whom are displaced from Sudan’s disenfranchized margins, is in itself political and may lead to their political inclusion. Being within the limits and control of the state that excluded them in the first place, IDPs cannot explicitly struggle for their rights. However, their daily survival practices may offer an opportunity to create the extended action space required for future emancipatory politics and transformation.
