ABSTRACT
Housing informality and processes like occupancy urbanism and auto construction are intrinsic to urbanisation in the Global South. In cities like Gurgaon, which urbanised very rapidly, neighbourhoods like urban villages transitioned away from rural agrarian lifestyles and also became arrival spaces for rural labour migrants through the production of informal rental housing. Against the backdrop of Gurgaon’s speedy capitalistic urbanisation, this chapter examines the changing subjectivities of local villagers and new arrivals at the moment of “becoming urban”. The subjectivities of local villagers are reshaped by livelihood transitions, entrenched social identities as well as new alliances with the state and emerging social actors, while migrant renters become urban subjects by negotiating with landlords and laying claims to public space through quotidian performances.
These interactions and adaptations shape a form of collective life, which is not so much about collaboration and community as constitutive of negotiation, value regimes, and tacit understandings that have evolved specifically in urban villages owing to their experience of rural–urban transition and their treatment as zones of exception by the planning apparatus of the city. Thus, examining locality and subjectivity in Gurgaon’s urban villages enables us to add the social dimension to theorisations of urban transformation, which centre around governance, land, and economy.
