ABSTRACT
This intervention reflects on doing research with Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and mapping the people and spaces they relate to in Lagos, Nigeria. The housing shortage, demographic movements entangled with ethnic frictions, sea level rise, and its effects on livelihoods and infrastructures are some of the intersecting processes that (re)produce and sustain the multidimensional socio-spatial inequalities that IDPs navigate. In researching these inequalities, the author pauses to contemplate the sensitivities involved in using the empirical material in ways that protect IDPs and other urban disadvantaged groups from actors engaged in political and economic urban development. Through collaboration with visual artist Quiroga Devia, the empirical material is analytically elaborated to produce a set of dwelling typologies and prototypical solutions, illustrated by the artist's drawings. The dialectical reflection on the forms and textures of the dwellings also sparked a discussion between the author and the artist on the spatial agency of environmental forces and ephemeral place-making. The intervention points to mapping as a collaborative and creative practice used to recalibrate the analytical process of understanding, in this case, dwelling and emplacement practices of urban groups—within textured and layered conceptual and material entanglements, which can be unpacked through an intersectional lens.
