ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces and deploys the phrase infrastructural citizenship. It reviews existing geographical debates on citizenship, demonstrating the distinction between citizenship practices and acts, and highlighting examples of how citizenship can be framed as both “insurgent” and “ordinary”. The chapter develops the notion of infrastructural citizenship as a conceptual lens through which to acknowledge the inter-connected relationship between infrastructure and citizenship in spaces of urban living. It presents a case study of state-subsidised housing in Cape Town to critically explore how public infrastructure connects with citizenship in contemporary South Africa. The increasingly widespread conceptualisation of infrastructure as both a technical and social element of institutional and everyday urban life has resulted in recognition of the role of infrastructure in other areas of urban life. Within scholarship addressing contemporary urbanisation in sub-Saharan Africa, there has been a marked focus on urban infrastructure, particularly in the context of rapid urbanisation, hyper-fragmentation and low household incomes.
