PPT - World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty

Renegotiating Access:
A governance analysis of migrants’ local negotiations to the
threat of land scarcity in expanding urban areas of Bukavu,
South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Fons van Overbeek
<strong>World</strong> <strong>Bank</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> Land and Poverty. April 26, 2012

Recent insecurity in Eastern Congo has changed people’s
land access strategies in the city of Bukavu.
Urban dwellers negotiate, forge alliances and compete for
control over land.
This dynamic created an environment in which most
households are exposed to and expect persistent and
systemic uncertainty.

What emerges is an environment within which
individuals seek to make deals with one of the
many local governance elites who have claimed
ownership over land management issues.
Although restricted, urban dwellers often have some
room for maneuver in order to gain (temporary)
access to land and housing

Research question which informed this paper:
How do governance arrangements provide and
thwart room for maneuver in the accessibility of
land for new settlers in the periphery of Bukavu
and how do the different strategies of (potential)
land users influence these governance
arrangements?
What follows are 3 cases to demonstrate how migrants
use different strategies to gain access to land.

Looking at local strategies to gain access to and control over
land through such a governance lens is not intended to
completely displace the focus on institutions, rights, and
the restricted agency of local people.
But the paper tried to provide a more nuanced picture of how
rule in land governance circulates, and indeed, is changed
by this circulation (this duality is informed by Foucault’s
‘governmentality’ framework)

Competition for land in Bukavu seems to be poorly
regulated due to :
- social and economic change;
- contradictory public policies;
- change in patronage networks;
- But especially..
..a multiplicity of (competing) governance institutions.

Case I: ‘Working under the radar’
Some migrant groups rather prefer to work ‘under the radar’
of already present governance institutions.
Villagers who have now come to live close to each other in
the city have received support of church organizations,
NGOs and local entrepreneurs but to no success.
Their governance arrangements have not (yet) been densely
regulated, but rather operate as a loosely constructed
understanding between people within the group.

What really constitutes these migrant groups? What
do they do?
It is neither geographical proximity nor a dense connection
with fellow migrants that is of importance.
Every household enjoys some (financial) support and
assistance when needed.
But one also needs to renew or confirm the social contract.

How can ‘working under the radar’ still change
institutional competition in peri-urban Bukavu?
It has given a particular group of migrants more leeway to
remain in control over their land without being constantly
harassed by money hungry government elites
In some areas of peri-urban Bukavu the emerging
governance arrangements of migrants seem to reduce the
influence and claimed control of local chefs.

Case II: Migrants’Patterns of Mobility, Trans-Local
Land Use and Hybrid Identities
With the increasing fiscal and political pressure on traditional
leaders in the villages customary institutions and social
ties are put under stress.
Migrants in Bukavu feel that they regularly need to renew
their (social) contract, with traditional chiefs in the village.
As a consequence governance practices from the villages
reach into the city and vice versa.

Migrants who are regularly going back to the village have
formed a specific locally embedded ‘hybrid’ identity.
They continually need to negotiate their roles and
expectations in order to secure access to governance
arrangements and control over their ‘family’ land.
In sum, it evolves as a result of the interaction between
governance arrangements of varying, overlapping and
interpenetrating service deliveries.

Case III: Constuction Anarchique
Anarchistic construction is always the result of transactions
between authorities and residents.
Many local authorities have been selling inappropriate public
areas (roads, playing fields, bus stations, cemeteries, etc.)
to make money.
‘Construction anarchique’ is encouraged by the government
itself and this rationale is imitated by other institutions like
the church and influential entrepreneurs.

Both national and local government officials will not take
away the stick with which they can hit their population
every now and then.
Construction anarchique feeds the current political system,
but also gives more maneuvering space to local residents
of Bukavu to construct their house and live in the city
when not much money is available.
Some governance rationales will not change easily,
especially not when copied by other institutions:
the status quo remains
(however, migrants learned to adapt to it)

Conclusion I
Bukavu is becoming poorer and more unequal. It is evident
that the land governance arena in Bukavu is fragile and
transitory.
The paper has focused on (restricted) agency of migrants.
It does not mean that they always have the power and
opportunity to secure their livelihoods or the ability to
really escape the ‘poverty trap’.

Conclusion II
Most of the variety of institutions that are involved in land
management, or touch upon issues of access to land, are
not dedicated to the purpose or dependent on it in any
functional way (migrant groups).
Amid a plethora of institutions different people rely on
different institutions to support their claims to
environmental goods or services, such as access to land.
For most activities they combine sets of claims supported
by different institutions (hybrid identities).

Conclusion III
Many of these institutions are informal, and consist more in
the regularized practices of particular groups of people
than in any fixed set of rules (like seen in the case of
construction anarchique);
As such they are also dynamic, changing over time as social
actors alter their behavior (hybrid identities and affiliations)
to suit new social, political and economic circumstances.

As migrants in the periphery of Bukavu interact with
each other and with local governance elites in the
context of these negotiation processes, their
actions may, over time, serve to reproduce
particular institutions…
…but they may also serve to alter them, and thus to
push institutionally influenced land access (and
land use) dynamics along new pathways.

Thank you for your attention!
fons.vanoverbeek@wur.nl