Gendered infrastructural citizenship: shared sanitation facilities in quarry road west informal settlement, Durban, South Africa

Wiltgen Georgi, N., Buthelezi, S. and Meth, P. (2021) Gendered infrastructural citizenship: shared sanitation facilities in quarry road west informal settlement, Durban, South Africa. Urban Forum, 32, pp. 437-456. (doi: 10.1007/s12132-021-09421-z) (PMCID:PMC8271341)

Abstract

One significant component of the South African citizenship narrative is centred around the right to basic services and corresponding elements, including dignity and a healthy living environment. This paper employs the concept of infrastructural citizenship, which draws on both infrastructure and citizenship discourses to explore how participants experience and challenge public infrastructure and as such engage with questions surrounding citizenship on an everyday basis (Lemanski, 2019a). Adopting a gendered approach, this paper draws on the empirical case of Quarry Road West, an informal settlement located in Durban, and uses a qualitative methodology. Residents have access to Community Ablution Blocks, free shared sanitation facilities provided by the eThekwini Municipality. This paper argues that restricted access to the facilities undermines perceptions of privacy and health and negatively impacts women individually and in the community. Furthermore, this paper evaluates civic responses to inadequate infrastructure in the form of participation, protest and state-directed actions. As such, it examines how women-state relationships are embedded in public infrastructure, and limitations in regards to infrastructure shape interactions and engagements with the state, their experiences of citizenship, actualisation of rights and identities.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Meth, Professor Paula
• Authors: Wiltgen Georgi, N., Buthelezi, S., and Meth, P.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies
• Journal Name: Urban Forum
• Publisher: Springer
• ISSN: 1015-3802
• ISSN (Online): 1874-6330
• Published Online: 10 July 2021
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021
• First Published: First published in Urban Forum 32:437-456
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy