Are social movements achieving the right to adequate housing in Lagos, Nigeria?

Abstract

The right to adequate housing is central to urban struggles and has become important in contemporary urban governance and development discourse, especially in many African cities where rapid urban (re)development predisposes the poor to constant threats of forced eviction. It is generally believed that social movements can enable the collective actions of deprived and marginalized communities in claiming the right to the city. Housing is one of the most prominent areas where right to the city struggles manifest, being the gateway to many other basic needs and urban life. This chapter is underpinned by two questions: How are marginalized and deprived communities navigating the governance space in claiming their right to adequate housing? To what extent is their collective action resulting in access to adequate housing? In answering these questions, we draw on literature, policy documents, interviews with civil society and policy actors, and insights from the collective actions of the Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation. The combined concepts of social movements, right to the city and adequate housing, located within the broader governance discourse, provide the conceptual and theoretical underpinning for the empirical analysis. This chapter engages with the literature of governance, social movements and the right to the city, and the centrality of adequate housing to the struggles of the urban poor. It then presents the development and governance contexts in Lagos that structure everyday life and struggles of the urban poor communities for adequate housing. We then illustrate the different tactics the Federation deploys in claiming the right to the city, and the extent to which their collective actions deliver the central objectives of the right to adequate housing. The concluding section highlights the need for co-operation and synergy among the different actors within the governance as well as the need to address the prevailing fractured power relations in order to make progress towards achieving the right to adequate housing for the urban poor.