Negotiating Urban Citizenship: The Urban Poor, Brokers and The State in Mexico City and Khartoum

This study is about citizenship and informality in megacities. The percentage of the world population living in cities is expected to further increase in the coming decades. Urbanisation is characterised by informality in large parts of the globe. Despite urban dwellers formally having the right to a roof above their heads, public services and work, these basic livelihood features remain inaccessible for many. Urban poor do not have land titles or rental contracts, they live in improvised houses, obtain their electricity from private generators and earn their income in the informal economy. Notwithstanding, the city also offers them specific opportunities for political mobilisation and participation: this is the so-called “citizenship paradox”. In order to explore this paradox in greater depth, this study concentrates on the ways in which citizenship is shaped for poor inhabitants of two contrasting megacities. Based on six months field work in Mexico City and six months in Khartoum, spread over a period of three years, I argue that there are surprising similarities in the ways in which poor residents negotiate their citizenship with the local government in these two cities. These similarities are expressed in the role of intermediaries or brokers in the ‘grey zone’ of (state) power. They mediate between the population, the local government and other ‘authorities’ such as religious organisations, neighbourhood organisations, (development) NGOs and sometimes even criminal organisations. What is striking in the light of existing theories is that this kind of intermediation (often described as clientelism) does not disappear with democratisation. In Mexico City, which is democratic yet also characterised by scarcity, brokers operate in roughly the same way between the state and citizens as in Khartoum, which is authoritarian. Moreover, they even benefit from the democratic transition in Mexico, while the difference between Mexico City and Khartoum lies in the relative power position of the brokers vis-a-vis the local government. In Mexico, the brokers can choose between multiple political bosses, which gives them space to manoeuvre in relation to the state and strengthen their own position. In Khartoum, brokers depend on a sole political boss – the ruling party - , which means that they often operate as an extension of the state. Given that has consequences for the negotiation position of the poor residents, I plea for making a distinction between multipolar and unipolar brokerage