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Urban Frontiers. From Illegal Land Occupation to Legalized Property

Objective

No land, that government and developers see as future cities in the Global South, is vacant. There is no empty ‘no-man’s land.’ Individual citizens, social movements, squatters, and urban developers already engage in making their land use look legal. Urban property development in the Global South often starts out in illegality. Only subsequently does it become legal. This project explains how?

Mainstream research on the Global South sees urban land in technical terms of rapid urbanization, and the challenges of providing sufficient housing, infrastructure, and service. Yet, if we fail to understand the significance of institutional transformation of urban land, we will not understand the future political landscape in the Global South, as landed property is the pivot around which government and citizenship turn. With this project, I develop and combine two new concepts to explain how people - and not just the state - code access to land and then conjure up legality for facts already existing on the ground. Coding is rulemaking, whereas legalization gives a rule the quality of law. A rule’s quality as law is not intrinsic to the rule itself, but something attributed to it in social and political interaction. Governments make laws, but the originality of the present project lies in determining how multiple actors aim to make their land claims appear legal as if they were sanctioned and approved by state and law.

My team and I will collect material evidence (record artefacts from archives, material structures, physical markers and signs, boundaries, and documents and other expressions not produced directly for us) and ethnographic testimonies (from residents, land users, civil servants, lawyers, politicians, and developers) to establish how illegal land use is made to look legal.

Nine conflicts-case studies will be conducted in peri-urban areas of cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America by 1 prof (PI), 3 assoc. profs, 3 postdocs and 3 PhDs.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2023-ADG

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Host institution

KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 317 687,50
Address
NORREGADE 10
1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark

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Region
Danmark Hovedstaden Byen København
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 317 687,50

Beneficiaries (2)

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