Refusing a “City without Slums”: Moroccan slum dwellers' nonmovements and the art of presence

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Refusing a “City without Slums”: Moroccan slum dwellers' nonmovements and the art of presence Mona Atia The George Washington University, 1957 E Street NW, Suite 512, Washington, DC 20052, United States of America

ABSTRACT

In June 2018, as a result of a program known as “Villes Sans Bidonvilles” (VSB) or “Cities without Slums,” the Kingdom of Morocco declared 58 of 85 cities across the country as slum-free. This paper analyzes the “pockets of resistance” that the Kingdom of Morocco has faced in the implementation of the VSB program. I assert that the contestations and acts of resistance pursued by slum-dwellers are an art of presence – “the ability of the subaltern subjects to assert their collective will in spite of all odds, to circumvent the constraints, utilizing what is possible, and discover new spaces within which to make themselves heard, seen, felt and realized” (Bayat, 2017:111). The art of presence is “the fundamental movement in the life of nonmovements,” therefore I combine the two concepts to argue that slum-dwellers responded to the VSB in incremental/spontaneous and organized/strategic ways, and in doing so they forced the authorities to change their approach against all odds. Using two case studies, I demonstrate how slum dwellers' responses to the rehousing scheme delayed the VSB process by a number of years, and in fact made the authorities offer a resettlement option (recasement) that was preferable to the residents. As slum dwellers resisted the intervention of the state and used tactics of refusal, protest, and grassroots organizing, they turned urban space into a site of contention, and made claims to that space despite being “dispersed, unorganized and atomized” (Bayat, 2017:106). The social ‘nonmovement’ of the slum-dwellers led to tangible benefits for them, and led to the “socialization of the state” through the replacement of the government rehousing program with a resettlement scheme that they preferred. They therein resisted the state's attempt to make them invisible, eradicate their built environment and inculcate them into proper neoliberal development subjects. Their resistance was not a form of radical, insurgent citizenship, but rather a form of “deradicalized dissent” that amended the existing order instead of producing a new one. Against all odds, the art of presence of the slum-dwellers induced a dramatic change in housing policy in their favor.

1. Introduction At the start of the “Villes Sans Bidonvilles” (VSB) or “Cities without Slums” program in 2004, the Moroccan Ministry of housing deemed nearly five million Moroccans were living in “low quality housing” (Moroccan Ministry of Housing, 2017). In June 2018, as a result of the program, the Kingdom of Morocco declared 58 of 85 cities across the country as slum-free. Nearly two million Moroccans still live in some form of informal housing, often without sanitation and sometimes without water supply or electricity (Moroccan Ministry of Housing, 2017). 1.3 million of that two million are said to live in bidonville (shantytown/slum) 1, defined by the government as settlements that consist of homes of precarious construction with insecure land tenure; these are homes built with temporary materials like sheet metal and other recyclable materials (UN Habitat, 2003; see Fig. 1). In this paper I argue that slum-dwellers responded to the VSB in incremental/spontaneous and organized/strategic ways, and in doing so they forced the

authorities to change their approach against all odds. While the bidonville is not the only type of slum in Morocco, it is seen as the “most emblematic type of slum” and the central target for the VSB program (Navins-Bouchanine, 2003:8). Most of the targeted homes are less than two stories with corrugated metal rooftops, while mid-rise and brick or concrete structures remain outside the VSB program, regardless of their land-tenure status. Since 2003, and largely in response to the Casablanca bombings, the government has attempted to better integrate marginalized populations into the social fabric and to develop programs that might ameliorate the escalating housing crisis that has plagued Moroccan cities (Zemni & Bogaert, 2011). However, ignoring urban blight until it became a security threat had dire consequences for the states' ability to address its “slum problem.” It is under the banner of housing reform that the Ministry launched the flagship VSB program as a security-centered approach to systematically eliminate slums from Morocco. The program consists of three strategies that were pursued in phases: phase one was upgrading, phase

E-mail address: [email protected]. A vast literature critiques the nomenclature of the terms slum and slum-dwellers as inadequate and leading to distortions (Arabindoo, 2011; Roy, 2011). The terminology is problematic because they “homogenize and stigmatize a global urban population” and “squashes people into totalizing characterizations and in that reductive way, reproduce an over determination of urban poverty that has difficulty recognizing emergent spaces of invention and agency.” (Holston, 2009:249). However, it is precisely this emergent agency and creativity that I wish to highlight in this article. Therefore, while I concur with the critiques of the terminology slum and slum-dwellers, I deploy the terms for the lack of a better alternative and to signal to the reader the subject of the paper. 1

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.02.014 Received 7 February 2018; Received in revised form 9 February 2019; Accepted 16 February 2019 0264-2751/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Mona Atia, Cities, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.02.014

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risky and the prices as prohibitively expensive. As one official stated “In my opinion, the VSB project is a failure because there are many families that are so poor they cannot even afford to pay 20,000 MAD (approximately $2,100 USD)” (author interview, Ministry of Urban Policy, May 8, 2015). Given slum dwellers reluctance to accept the program, the rehousing scheme is largely viewed (even by the government) as a failure and accounts for less than 10% of the VSB program (author interview, Ministry of Housing, April 6, 2015). A second reason for the limited success of the rehousing scheme was the lack of consideration of slum residents' needs. According to one civil society association, “When Dyar Mansour built the apartments they did not think at all about the social needs of the place, parking, transportation, schools, a hospital, corner-store, or bathhouse. They just built housing without any banks, soccer fields, etc. There is nothing there in terms of social life. The quality of the apartments is also not great, so among the people who moved they are now protesting because of this issue. Whenever there is a problem they have to fix it on their own expense”. (author interview, Association, May 8, 2015)

Fig. 1. Remaining slum dwellings in al-Kora, January 2016, photo by the author.

Slum residents proclaimed that the apartments offered to them were too small, poorly constructed and ill-equipped, and so many residents refused them. Despite their vulnerability, the population actively contested and resisted their management, financialization and displacement. Instead of forcing residents to take up loans and reside in mid-rise apartment buildings built through private-public-partnerships, the state began offering resettlement (recasement) to slum residents using plots of land that the residents could build on themselves (with particular parameters). Resettlement gave land to slum residents for 20,000 MAD (approximately $2100 USD). Two slum residents were assigned one 80 m2 plot of land on which they were authorized to build a commercially zoned ground floor unit plus a three-story apartment building (R + 3, see Fig. 3). The resettlement program was created to respond to the failures of the prior rehousing program and was quite popular among slum residents because of its affordability, the prospect of becoming landowners, no requirement to go into debt, and the potential for income-generation. The biggest obstacle to this program was the fact that very few slum dwellers had the cash to actually build their new homes. With deadlines to relocate within six months of signing the agreement, slum dwellers turned to third-party developers to cover the

two was rehousing and phase three was resettlement. The stated goal of the program was to provide decent housing for the over 200,000 households living in urban slums initially by 2010, a deadline that was prolonged several times (Moroccan Ministry of Housing, n.d.). The program both incorporates and replaces some of the pre-existing strategies for dealing with slum populations. The predominant strategy for addressing slum areas before VSB was in situ upgrading (restructuation) to improve the basic infrastructure of slums, including widening roads, improved plumbing and sanitation, and the provision of electricity. A local representative of one of the largest slum redevelopment companies discussed some of the issues with this prior strategy: “Upgrading was not successful. There was financing problems and the slum dwellers wanted to benefit from the apartments or plots so we stopped doing slum upgrading” (author interview, August 5, 2015). In contrast to previous strategies of slum development, VSB began as a rehousing (relodgement) scheme to move slum residents from slum barracks in the center of the city to five-story apartments in the periphery (see Fig. 2). The rehousing approach asks slum residents to make a security deposit on an apartment that costs 200,000 MAD (approximately $21,000 USD) and to take out a mortgage on the remaining balance. While the government sponsored a loan qualification program to make mortgages accessible to the population, slum dwellers, who are largely employed in the informal economy, saw the loans as overly

Fig. 2. Apartments offered to but largely declined by slum residents in Ain Harrouda, outside the boundary of Zenata, the new green city. Photo by the author.

Fig. 3. The rehousing option (R + 3) permits slum residents to construct their own homes on plots of land outside the city center. 2

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construction costs (Toutain & Rachmuhl, 2014). Often times, they would agree to give the developer the ground floor or third apartment in exchange for them covering construction costs. While this exchange was technically illegal, the state, well aware of the arrangement, turned a blind eye.2 Despite these issues, the VSB initiative has received significant international recognition. UN Habitat and other multilateral agencies including the World Bank have declared VSB a grand success and heralded the program as a replicable and scalable model for other governments in the region (World Bank, 2006). The Ministries of Housing in Tunisia and Egypt have already begun to copy the protocol, and UN Habitat called the program “the best of its kind in Africa,” awarding Morocco second place after Indonesia, “for delivering one of the world's most successful and comprehensive slum reduction and improvement program(s)” (UN Habitat, 2010). Despite UN Habitat's praise of VSB, the program failed to meet the declared goal of rendering Morocco slum-free by 2012, and continues to face significant obstacles, resistance, and limitations in its ability to produce slum-free cities. The Moroccan Minister of Housing, Nabil Benabdellah admitted in a 2014 interview with La Vie Eco, “We are currently facing serious resistance, that we are no longer able to deal with the volume of slum households that is created each year, or 10,000 cases per year” (Harmak, 2014). In 2017, when asked about the significant delays in the achievement of VSB's stated goals, he reiterated in an interview with the same journalist, “We are now at the bottom of the basket in the treatment of the housing deficit, which is why we are facing increasingly complex situations… This is particularly the case in slums where we see the installation of new households and the formation of pockets of resistance extremely difficult to treat” (Harmak, 2017). This paper analyzes the “pockets of resistance” that the Kingdom of Morocco has faced in the implementation of the VSB program. I assert that the contestations and acts of resistance pursued by slum-dwellers are an art of presence – “the ability of the subaltern subjects to assert their collective will in spite of all odds, to circumvent the constraints, utilizing what is possible, and discover new spaces within which to make themselves heard, seen, felt and realized” (Bayat, 2017:111). The art of presence is “the fundamental movement in the life of nonmovements,” therefore I argue that slum-dwellers responded to the VSB in incremental/spontaneous and organized/strategic ways, and in doing so they forced the authorities to change their approach against all odds. Using two case studies, I demonstrate how slum dwellers' courageous and creative responses to the initial rehousing scheme delayed the VSB process by a number of years, and in fact made the authorities offer a resettlement option (recasement) that was preferable to the residents. As slum dwellers resisted the intervention of the state through tactics of refusal, protest, and grassroots organizing, they turned urban space into a site of contention, and made claims to that space despite being “dispersed, unorganized and atomized” (Bayat, 2017:106). As James C. Scott reminds us, “human resistance to the more severe forms of social straightjacketing prevents monotonic schemes of centralized rationality from ever being realized.” (Scott, 1998:348). The social ‘nonmovement’ of the slum-dwellers brought them tangible benefits, and led to the “socialization of the state” through the replacement of the government sponsored rehousing program with a resettlement scheme that they preferred. They therein resisted the state's attempt to decrease their

visibility, eradicate their built environment and inculcate them into proper neoliberal development subjects. Their resistance was not a form of radical, insurgent citizenship, but rather a form of “deradicalized dissent” that amended the existing order instead of producing a new one. Despite a repressive context, the art of presence initiated by the slum-dwellers induced a dramatic change in housing policy in their favor. The main reason resettlement became part of VSB was because of slum dweller demand, demonstrating what Bayat calls the “socialization of the state.” Here the government was forced to offer another option to slum residents. According to most of the residents I spoke with, this was much preferred over apartment dwelling. The resettlement scheme requires that plots of land be available and therefore is easier to implement in cities with an excess of land outside of the city. It is much more difficult to implement in the crowded conditions of Casablanca and Rabat. Within these two cities, I looked at two contentious cases that had dragged on for years despite the state's interventions. While in both cases residents were eventually forced to move, the conditions of their move, the process that led to the resettlement agreement, and the ability to negotiate relocation on-site, mark these cases as exceptional. Given my interest in understanding the underbelly of the VSB program not celebrated in the literature, I sought case studies where the negotiations between slum residents and the state were prolonged. Under neoliberal urbanism, slum relocation, gentrification, displacement etc., are seen as an inevitable part of broader urban processes. Instead of reifying neoliberal urbanism, I seek to expose the quotidian forms of ‘nonmovements’ that make these processes contentious, messy, and full of surprises. 2. Methodology and case study sites Between April 2015 and January 2016, over 50 semi-structured interviews were conducted in collaboration with a local researcher who was a graduate student at the INAU (National Institute for Urban Planning) in Rabat. All interviews were semi-structured and unrecorded but detailed notes were made and transcribed upon completion of the interviews. Interviews ranged in structure and length but most were approximately 1 h. The information is presented anonymously to protect the identities of all parties interviewed. Official interviews are stated as such, while interviews with slum residents are identified in the text by their location (al-Kora or Zenata). Seventeen interviews were conducted with various government actors involved in the administration of the VSB project at the national, regional and local scale, including with the representatives at the Ministries of Interior, Finance and Housing/Urban Planning. At the regional and local scale, we interviewed representatives from the governor's office of the prefecture, the urban agency, al-Omrane development agency, Dyar Mansour development agency, the office of technical studies and the L'ADS (Agency for Social Development), to gather government data on the VSB initiative and details of the initiative in the selected cases. Interviews with these stakeholders were conducted in the interviewees' offices. We also conducted 37 interviews with community advocacy organizations and slum dwellers to shed light on how they respond to the VSB program. Interviews with residents were conducted either within the settlement or in a nearby café. Contacts were made using snowball sampling, which of course comes with some selection bias. However, the variety of interviews conducted with various stakeholders minimizes the likelihood of misrepresentation within the sample. Interviews were conducted in Arabic or French. Notes were transcribed in French and then translated to English by the author. Data was coded and annotated for logical themes using an abductive and iterative approach. I employ a case-study approach of two slum settlements within the bustling metropolitan cities of Rabat and Casablanca. Within the capital of Rabat lies Douar al-Kora, a nearly waterfront settlement in the Yacoub Mansour neighborhood of the city. Inside greater Casablanca

2

In Morocco, governing is encapsulated in the concept of the makzen, which represents all forms of state or government. The concept, which predates the protectorate period signifies the power of the central state apparatus and the lack of differentiation between different scales of government. Since VSB was launched under royal decree by King Mohammed VI, the mandates flow from the central government via the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning and trickle down to all other scales of government. While local government is implicated in its implementation, governing is a top-down affair with little agency at the local scale. Therefore, when I refer to “the state” or “government” in this paper, I am referring to the makzen. 3

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Fig. 4. Case study sites within the Moroccan cities of Rabat and Casablanca.

lies the commune (or municipality)3 of Ain Harrouda, known for hosting the site of Morocco's premier “green city” Zenata4 (see Fig. 4). The first case study, Douar al-Kora (herein referred to as al-Kora), is the oldest, largest and densest slum in Rabat. Established in 1942 and with a strategic location on the seashore, the slum is part of a larger neighborhood known as Yacoub Mansour. Initially, the slum was on the outskirts of the city, but as Rabat grew, it quickly became part of the city's limits. In 2004, the area had over 10,000 residents. Starting in 1986, there were a number of propositions to relocate the residents of al-Kora, however, all attempts failed. Starting from 2002, the King initiated a partnership with the Dyar Mansour Corporation, a subsidy of the state-owned Caisse de dépot et de gestion (French for Deposit and Management Fund, referred to as CDG), to relocate the slum in three phrases, with a commercial center at the heart. Developers were keen to access valuable seafront property and build market-rate buildings on the waterfront, while relocating residents further away from the site. The slum residents' resistance, however, created several obstacles to these plans. The second case is Zenata, a new planned green city between Morocco's largest city, Casablanca, and the nearby seaside, largely urban municipality of Mohammedia. Mohammedia is part of the newer Metropolitan area known as Greater Casablanca. Zenata is an attempt to rebalance the

disequilibrium between the two sides of greater Casablanca, which is split by the service sector in the east and industry in the west (the side closer to Mohammedia). Zenata is located within the commune of Ain Harrouda, an area well known in Morocco for its quantity of slums. Approximately 74% of the population of Ain Harrouda lives in slums, but they are spread across the territory rather than concentrated in one location (author interview, urbanism service in Ain Harrouda, July 15, 2015). SAZ, the subsidiary of CDG responsible for developing Zenata, claims that there are over 7000 slum-dwelling households in Zenata that need relocation (author interview, SAZ, June 18, 2015). They sought to consolidate the slum dwellers into a single location near the industrial part of the territory in order to free up more valuable land on the seafront for profitable touristic development. SAZ built 2500 apartments for the slum dwellers, however once again, the targeted population refused relocation to the apartments; only 300 households accepted relocation to the allocated apartments. Given the resistance to the relocation scheme, SAZ attempted to broker a resettlement agreement with the slum dwellers which provided plots of land outside Zenata. However, the slum dwellers rejected this proposal and requested resettlement in the same location, which forced SAZ to revise their resettlement plans. Given these contestations, the slum residents were offered parcels of land for resettlement within the territory of Zenata. This is largely seen as a victory for slum residents, whose persistent contestations won them a seat at the bargaining table.

3 Morocco is a Kingdom with numerous scales of government and layers of administrative division. The country is divided into 12 regions, which consist of 75 provinces/prefectures, which are divided further into communes/municipalities. 4 Zenata, a mixed-use sustainable city and one of the flagship projects of the Kingdom's national sustainable development strategy known as the Green Plan. Zenata is funded through The European Investment Bank and the French Development Agency (AFD) and will be implemented with an environmental impact assessment and include energy efficiency requirements.

3. Theoretical framework Numerous scholars have critiqued the “return of the slum” (Gilbert, 2007) as a central component of researchers' agendas. Given the sin quo non status attributed to slums, debates have surfaced about how to productively engage with slums (Roy, 2011), whether as a call for visiting the “slum as theory” (Rao, 2006) or more recent calls to build “an ontology of slum practices” (Arabindoo, 2011). The account of slum dweller contestations 4

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discussed in this paper aims to “provide valuable insights into linkages between the coarser grain of macro-structural processes and the finer texture of human experience” (Arabindoo, 2011: 644). I am inspired by Holston's call to “recognize ‘slums’ as places in which residents use their ingenuity to create a daily world of adaptations, connections, and strategies with which to inhabit modern metropolises on better terms than those imposed by the powerful local and international forces that would have them segregated and servile” (Holston, 2009: 249). However, I exercise caution in reading these incremental everyday practices of survival as a new form of urban citizenship. Displacement, whether through gentrification (Brenner, Peck, & Theodore, 2010; Lees, 2012; Newman & Wyly, 2006; Rodríguez & Di Virgilio, 2016), slum relocation (Berner & Korff, 1995; Bhan, 2009) or other forms of urban regeneration (Mahmud, 2010; Paller, 2012), is widely discussed in the literature on neoliberal urbanism as an inevitable aspect of contemporary urban transformation (Atkinson & Bridge, 2005; Davidson, 2009; Gonick, 2015). Zemni and Bogaert (2011) describe the Moroccan VSB program as part of a global politics of neoliberal governmentality, and in his extensive work on the topic, Bogaert highlights the withdrawal of the state and the expropriation of waterfront property for lucrative redevelopment (Bogaert, 2013, 2011). However, the neoliberal governmentality regime governing slums is partial, unable to realize its stated purpose, and wrought with tensions, as slum residents make claims and engage in micro-politics around the intervention. Despite the omnipresence of neoliberal urbanism, there is a rich literature that highlights the “spaces of poverty and forms of popular agency that often remain invisible and neglected” in urban theory (Roy, 2011: 224). Subaltern urbanism calls for an understanding of the everyday spatial practices of the subaltern as forms of agency (Ballard, 2015; Benjamin, 2008; Gidwani, 2006; McFarlane, 2012). Holston argues that the struggle for rights to a daily life of dignity in the city is a new formulation of citizenship, one that is conceived of in residential life (Holston, 2008:313). Comparing the changing housing rights regimes in Shanghai and Mumbai, Weinstein and Ren (2009) find that the political contestations in Mumbai led to the construction of a more protective regime that turned slum residents into more active urban citizens who articulated their rights to housing and made new claims in the city. In some cases, processes of exclusion resulting from slum redevelopment schemes, lead slum residents to articulate their resistance using a discourse of justice and human rights (Imas & Weston, 2011). However, in Morocco, as in Manila and Bankok, the discourse of rights has a limited role because the military is able to use force or the threat of force to obstruct resistance movements and deter slum activism (Berner & Korff, 1995). The agency of the subaltern is the subject of numerous works, whether conceptualized as “insurgent citizenship” (Holston, 2008), the “right to the city,” (Huchzermeyer, 2011; Weinstein & Ren, 2009) “political society,” (Chatterjee, 2004) or other forms of social movements (Hooper & Ortolano, 2012; Mahmud, 2010; Paller, 2012). While the aforementioned theorizations can be relevant to the VSB case, context is absolutely critical to understanding the ways in which subaltern subjects respond to neoliberal urbanity. Holston's insurgent citizenship, for example, is quite useful for thinking about how democratization processes enable subaltern subjects to see themselves as rights bearing and to make claims as citizens. However, in the context of authoritarianism and failed revolutions that are hallmarks of the current political climate in the Middle East and North Africa, the language of empowered citizenship and democratization seems not quite fitting. In the Moroccan case, despite its presence in the constitution, the language of rights has limited salience for housing advocacy and the discursive framing of democratization and justice, would have likely alienated the state and led to the use of force over negotiation.5 Rather than use the concept of insurgent citizenship to analyze

the Moroccan case, I turn to Asef Bayat's concept of nonmovements and art of presence to recognize the important gains made by slum-dweller organizing without overstating or romanticizing them. Bayat's theoretical frameworks are developed from his analysis of street life in the Middle East, mainly Cairo and Tehran and the concepts resonate particularly strongly when studying subaltern agency and everyday spaces in the context of authoritarianism. Nonmovements are the “collective actions of noncollective actors,” or “the shared contentious practices of a larger number of fragmented people whose similar but disconnected claims produce important social change in their own lives, and society at large, even though such practices are rarely guided by an ideology, recognizable leadership or organization” (Bayat, 2017:106). I differentiate between two types of nonmovements: the spontaneous/sporadic contestations of slum residents and the more systematic and organized methods of resistance. I assert that the social nonmovements discussed in the paper represent the “socialization of the state” (Bayat, 2010:251) and that in the Moroccan context this constitutes an art of presence. I highlight the fissures and ruptures in the VSB program and therein the broader top-down neoliberal security state, and in doing so, I recognize the structure (neoliberal urbanism) and the agency of the subaltern (subaltern urbanism) without romanticizing or overstating either. The following section outlines the various spontaneous and sporadic contestations of slum residents, while the subsequent one narrates the forms of organized resistance to the relocation. I emphasize how, contestation and resistance created a pressure valve on the state and eventually led to a change in policy towards resettlement, a policy largely seen as preferable to the slum residents. 4. Negotiating resettlement: Spontaneous and sporadic contestations to VSB In both case studies, the residents largely rejected the rehousing schemes. First and foremost, they took issue with the census and eligibility criteria. Next, the residents did not want to be relocated to another neighborhood, they wanted to remain on site. In both case studies, the populations successfully lobbied to have their rehousing occur on site, despite having to give up access to the beachfront. In addition, the slum residents took issue with the apartments. The cost of the apartments was prohibitive to them and many refused to take on the debt necessary to receive apartments in the new communities. The apartments also did not consider the lifestyle of the residents, who preferred to remain in low-rise buildings and were not accustomed to apartment dwelling. They had concerns about the quality of the apartments, their location and the limitations on resale. Finally, the residents felt wholly excluded from the redevelopment process. The residents felt that the program was top-down, that they were consulted too late in the decision-making process and that they were not included in the plans but rather seen as an obstacle. They did not feel prepared for the relocation and found the conditions unacceptable. They knew that the developers were benefiting from state subsidies and tax benefits and felt this was done at their expense. 4.1. Contesting the census The most contentious issue with the relocation scheme was the census and eligibility criteria. The project accounted for the number of units required based on the number of individual barracks, and did not account for the fact that slum residents tend to live with extended family members/multiple households under one roof. Thus, when relocation was proposed, residents refused to relocate to a single apartment, instead requesting one apartment per nuclear family unit. This caused a crisis in the project because the slum residents both contested the criteria used to determine eligibility and there was not enough space to accommodate the exponential growth in the number of units needed. The long period between when the rehousing was announced

5 Article 31 of the 2011 Moroccan Constitution states that citizens have the right to decent housing, but there is no specific definition given and it is of limited utility as a discursive frame. See page 15, http://www.sgg.gov.ma/ Portals/0/constitution/constitution_2011_Fr.pdf.

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and when the building began meant that the number of households who felt they should be included multiplied quickly; as youth married and procreated this only compounded the problem. The residents took issue with the difference between their perceived rights and the procedures:

privatized individuals responsible for their own well-being, and further facilitate(s) their exploitation by financiers in the name of connecting them to capital (Roy, 2010). Through this system, the poor become linked to global finance capital, as both the beneficiaries of pro-poor businesses and as new emerging markets for profiteering (Jones, 2012).

“The first phase was met with a lot of problems, namely at the census level of the rights of holders, because there are residents who have not been counted, which is contradictory to the royal proclamation which insists that every slum dwelling family has the right to housing. But the people who run the program don't respect the views of the King”. (author interview, al-Kora, August 16, 2015)

4.3. Refusing relocation Nonmovements are the “shared contentious practices of a large number of people whose similar but disconnected claims produce important social change in their own lives, and society at large” (Bayat, 2017:106). The most common response to the VSB program was simply refusing to relocate. Residents frequently refused to relocate as an act of solidarity with family members who were deemed ineligible for the scheme, “There are families who refuse to leave the slum because either they were not counted in the census survey or their recently married children were not counted” (author interview, al-Kora, August 16, 2015). Another resident explained that he himself had refused to move because the allocations were unfair to other members of his family, “I was offered three vouchers [for apartments], but I refused them because my sons did not receive apartments” (author interview, Zenata, August 13, 2015). Despite the threat of and occasional use of force by the authorities, a few cases were particularly persistent in their protest, “Our neighbors refused to move. The court issued that they must move so they [the authorities] used force to remove them from their barrack. She was pregnant and she lost her baby in the process. Another son threatened to commit suicide with gas, there were lots of families that refused” (author interview, al-Kora, August 4, 2015). Bayat posits that the “political constrain under authoritarian rule compels the urban disenfranchised” to resort to nonmovements which in turn become “collective actions of noncollective actors” (Bayat, 2017:110). Some claimed that the only residents who moved to the new apartments were those who were coerced or provided with incorrect information, “of those who agreed to move to the new housing, it was because the representatives pushed them to do so and circulated false information in order to convince people to accept the proposal” (author interview, Zenata, August 13, 2015). Residents in the settlements frequently communicated with each other and collectively refused to relocate because of dissatisfaction with the new units, “While almost 300 families accepted the rehousing, they regretted it and advised others not to accept the apartments because they are suffering in these new units” (author interview, Zenata, August 13, 2015). Bayat asserts that nonmovements likes these are established through a “tacit recognition of their commonalities” and that “people forge collective identities and extend their solidarities beyond their immediate familiar circles to include, the unknown, the stranger” (Bayat, 2017:104). In Zenata, a sense of exclusion from the new city's plans and feelings of being discarded and not unvalued by stakeholders pushed families to refuse the apartments,

Slum enumeration is a critical calculative practice for making slums intelligible for intervention (Ghertner, 2010:186). Through the implementation of its calculative practices, the state encounters “various technical difficulties and political challenges” that in turn “provoke a political response” (Ghertner, 2010:187). The issue of the slum census and the criteria for inclusion frequently came up as the most significant issue motivating the slum dwellers refusals, “After the company summoned the inhabitants via the authorities, in order to receive their apartments, many families found they were not included in the list of recipients and made their claims to SAZ (the developer)” (author interview, Zenata, August 10, 2015). While complaints to the local authorities were very common, and I often witnessed them directly while waiting for interviews, some residents escalated the matter to other judicial entities, usually to no avail. One resident described an escalation, “My neighbor has filed a complaint at the provincial level and also at the tribunal level and he has not received receipt of his complaint” (author interview, Zenata, August 10, 2015). 4.2. Resistance to financialization VSB asks slum residents to participate in the debt apparatus, expend significant personal financial resources, and bear risk. One of the biggest concerns for residents is the financial burden placed upon them by the relocation scheme, “The reason why we reject the program in the first place is because the apartments are expensive – more than 100,000 dirham – and narrow and we can't afford to go into debt” (author interview, Zenata, October 10, 2015). Slum-dwellers financial exclusion is largely based on their precarious work conditions and yet they are asked to accumulate personal debt in the name of bettering themselves and the nation (Schwittay, 2011.) Financial concerns were the most common explanation for resident refusal, followed by a relative's unmet claims, “We refused to move to the new settlement because we could not afford to pay 100,000 MAD. I prefer a lot of land because I can gradually build my house. The families that have accepted the apartments, perhaps they have the means to pay but I do not” (author interview, Zenata, August 10, 2015). One resident recounted the credit burden placed on those who accept the apartments,

“The idea behind the green city Zenata is a good idea, an important project but with respect to those who are from this area, it is a big problem. They encourage outside investors to come and invest in the area but as the original residents, we don't benefit at all from the project, they just want to relocate us, displace us and throw us into these tiny apartments. This is why we refused the apartments”. (author interview, Zenata, August 5, 2015)

“You are required to start a line of credit to pay for the apartment and every month you must pay towards the loan. The majority of families cannot afford the credit. I lost my job and I can't afford to pay the rent because I'm not working. The plots are a solution because they are less expensive and we can arrange to have a third party build the house”. (author interview, Zenata, August 13, 2015)

Refusal was often used as a last resort, a response to the top-down nature of the program, “They are able to tell people you must leave, without any discussion because this is the King's Initiative, and they refuse to communicate with civil society or to meet the needs of the residents. For this reason, the residents had to begin to refuse the project” (author interview, Zenata, August 5, 2015). When confronted by the state's rehousing program, many slum dwellers were dissatisfied by the quality and location of the apartments offered and refused to relocate. Some refused to relocate in solidarity

Another resident explained the financial situation of many of his neighbors, and suggested that the state should introduce other forms of intervention, “Slum dwellers don't have regular stable incomes, and cannot pay the monthly mortgages… the solution is to provide job opportunities for slum residents so that they can have regular incomes” (author interview, al-Kora, August 4, 2015). Through predatory financial practices like micro-credit, the integration of the poor into a system of “poverty capital,” as Roy adeptly calls it, turns the poor into 6

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Fig. 5. Reasons given by slum-residents for refusing to move, data collected by author in Al-Kora, March 2016.

with family members who were not allocated apartments. Many continued to make claims for them or their family members, crafting letters of protest, meeting with local authorities and contesting the census that was produced of the area. Others questioned the financial burden that the apartments would create for them and stated they did not have the means to participate (see Fig. 5). A final issue related to vacant slum dwellings. The project could not abolish the vacant slums because the owners could return to their property and request compensation according to Moroccan law. The slum could not be abolished and the city declared slum-free until all the residents had been relocated.

Frustration with the census procedure, frequently led residents to protest, “The latest protest was last Sunday, so that all the slum dwellers could benefit from the project because there are many families who are uncounted, mainly the newlyweds” (author interview, Zenata, December 2, 2015). Despite the state's violent response to protest activity, they continued, “People protested many times so that all of the slum dwelling families can benefit from the project, and many people have been arrested and imprisoned” (author interview, al-Kora, August 16, 2015). The protests continued in an organized way, as one resident recalled, “Each Sunday nearly 15 protests were conducted in front of the commune and others in the province of Mohammadia and on the first of May (Labor Day) they did it in Rabat carrying posters and chanting equity slogans” (author interview, Zenata, October 10, 2015). Often times the protest was in response to the lack of involvement of the residents in their relocation, “people protested again and again to demand their (constitutional) right to suitable housing. In 2010 Dyar Al Mansour started to construct buildings without any communication with civil society organizations” (author interview, Zenata, December 2, 2015). A variety of actors participated in the protest and the ability to represent them through organizations helped create a unified voice, “We began to protest in 2013, until 2015 March. We had 40 protests in this period. There were many demands also from the other stakeholders, property owners, industry owners etc. in the area who were protesting the plans for Zenata” (author interview, Zenata, August 6, 2015). When the protests did not lead to a response, they sometime took more extreme measures, like blocking the roads, one organizer recounted,

5. Negotiating resettlement II: Organized slum dweller resistance to VSB The previous section outlined the ways in which slum dwellers refused to relocate and take out loans to participate in VSB. Sometimes these contestations turned into more organized forms of resistance. This section recounts how slum residents protested collectively over a sustained period of time and in other cases organized formally and created civil society organizations. 5.1. Protest Protest was a frequent response to the forceful removal of families from the slum, “After, the problems started… the authorities (by way of the police and the army) intervened with force to displace them, but the residents protested against this operation… they did many demonstrations until the company (the developer) agreed to meet their demands” (author interview, al-Kora, August 16, 2015). Another resident recapped a similar occurrence in Zenata, “Initially, the authorities forced the resident to move and this led to protests in two of the settlements” (author interview, Zenata, August 13, 2015).

“Civil society organized protests every Sunday at the beginning, but the authorities did not listen and there was no result. Then we thought to cut off the roads, to create a protest, but the authorities 7

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took photos and targeted protestors and imprisoned them. We continued to protest this treatment and in 2015 they were released. In March 2015, we started to protest again but on Mondays and Tuesday and it was in response to these consistent protest that the local authorities said ok, go home, we will make sure you benefit from the plots in the next round”. (author interview, Zenata, August 5, 2015)

impact, the largest being systematic delays to the redevelopment of the slum. One organized recounted the success, “Before we were organized, there was no consideration of the needs of the community. But since we were able to organize, they started to lose time, the companies started to pay attention to our demands and now we have a say and our demands are starting to be met. The relationship, the treatment of the companies from 2013 onwards towards the association has improved”. (author interview, Zenata, August 6, 2015)

Systematic protest created ties between different types of affected residents, and led to formal organizing, the creation of civil society organizations and eventually the creation of a federation of NGOs.

According to the leader of the NGO federation in Zenata, they compiled a list of collective demands that all residents, including newlyweds, divorcees, widows, and workers would benefit from plots of land; that necessary services would be included in the redevelopment; existing businesses would receive a symbolic reimbursement for their relocation, and most importantly, that the associations would have a stake in the decision-making process for the resettlement as well as the entire new green city. As a result of the organizing, the associations were able to force a negotiation between the developers and the residents, “Today the company has set a period of two years for the slum dwellers to receive plots and now there's a discussion between the civil society, the local authorities and the SAZ about the supplemental list and the uncounted cases” (author interview, Zenata, October 10, 2015). While it is uncertain precisely which demands the state and developers will be held to and how, community organizing and the formation of collective demands worked to delay the construction plans for Zenata and disrupted the developers' plans in both case studies. Regardless of whether they created community advocacy associations, protested, resisted or defaulted on their loans, the slum residents were actively engaging with the state's policies and succeeded in disrupting the Kingdom's plans.

5.2. Formal organizing and civil society organizations Participating in protest also formed a basis for organizing and making collective claims, “Only after the housing construction project began, did the local authorities explain the plans for relocation… The developer forced the families to leave the settlement, but the inhabitants refused and created associations” (author interview, Zenata, August 10, 2015). The organizing enabled them to have a seat at the negotiation table, “the people have created two associations to protect and mobilize the people, to be the spokesmen of the residents with local authorities and the company” (author interview, Zenata, December 2, 2015). Slum dwellers gained a voice in the process through a combination of protest and organizing, “since we were able to organize, they started to lose time, the companies started to pay attention to our demands and now we have a say and our demands are starting to be met” (author interview, Zenata, May 8, 2015). A combination of protest and organizing was a tactic used by small business owners in the slums, who were concerned about losing their livelihoods, “One day in 2005, the police came early morning and started to destroy the market and the merchandise with them and demolished all of the barracks. At this time, merchants forced an association to prevent the authorities from demolishing their stores. The organized, filed complaints and sent letters to the prime minister and the council for human rights, but have not had any response”. (author interview, al-Kora, December 4, 2015)

6. Conclusion The state approaches the VSB problem as a security question, one that treats the slum and its residents as the problem. In addition, the state is content to let private developers pursue their profits at the cost of the residents, resulting in unacceptable housing alternatives. VSB faced resistance from slum residents because the authorities pursued a top-down approach; one that ignored the root causes of the urban housing problem and failed to address the underlying needs of the population. Despite widespread repression, the slum residents actively responded to their subjugation, in organized and spontaneous ways, and disrupted the Kingdom's plans to relocate, domesticate and financialize them. These everyday practices demonstrate the limits of and fissures in the Kingdom's neoliberal security state. Examining subaltern urbanisms serves to re-politicize the experiences of the urban poor and provincialize neoliberal narratives of urbanization in the Global South (Arabindoo, 2011; Parnell & Robinson, 2012). In response to the variegated refusals of the slum dwellers to rehousing, the Moroccan state adapted the VSB rehousing initiative to one of resettlement. Although not an original part of the program, resettlement (recasement) was the most successful aspect. This represents what Bayat calls the “socialization of the state,” or governmentality in reverse, as the residents were able to urge the state to adapt to the demands of society (Bayat, 2010:251). The slum residents had to move out of their homes but they did so on terms that were preferable to them – given the context, this is an “art of presence.” The odds were against them, they had little leverage in the face of the initiative, and yet they were able to change government policy. The growth of slums and informal settlements are not simply an “urban” problem. The root of the problem stems from rural to urban migration and the unequal distribution of wealth and resources in the country that leads so many people to the cities in search of a livelihood. Long-term solution must include improving the livelihood strategies of both urban and rural communities, so as to stem the in-flow of residents to the slums. A social justice-oriented approach would not seek to limit

Organizing was a way for the residents to demand inclusion in the plan and to have a say in their relocation. As the number of small associations proliferated, they saw a need to coordinate their claims, “Over time, fourteen NGOs were created to protest the relocation” (author interview, Zenata, August 6, 2015). The organizing and coordination emerged in response to the lack of inclusion of civil society from the outset. As a result of their exclusion, “the residents had to begin refusing the project. We created a network of associations, to defend the rights of the slum residents” (author interview, Zenata, May 8, 2015). The creation of a federation helped them reach more visibility, “An association was created for housing in 2007 after the King's inauguration of the project. And in 2011 after the construction of the apartments for the relocation of the slum dwellers, a federation was created of all the associations within Ain Harrouda. The protests started in front of the commune to demand the benefits of the plots of land and after that the local authorities and the SAZ organized meetings with 4 representatives of the federation”. (author interview, Zenata, October 10, 2015) Organizing was a way for the slum residents to make collective and coordinated claims, block the developers plans and negotiate for inclusion in the program. If all households were not removed, construction could not begin, “We created a network of associations, to defend the rights of the slum residents. They began the discussion for the relocation in one area and some households accepted to move and others refused. So till now, they were not able to demolish the slum” (author interview, Zenata, August 5, 2015). The organizing eventually had an 8

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utilizing what is possible” represents an art of presence and an opening within an oppressive regime (Bayat, 2017:111). Despite the odds, the subaltern's assertion of their collective will to “socialized the state” led to a more favorable outcomes for the subaltern. While it is important to understand VSB in its local context, it is a project that aligns with the current global campaign for “slum-free” cities and therefore has significant lessons for those interested in rethinking the spatialization of urban poverty (Arabindoo, 2011; Roy, 2013). VSB's goal to provide 100,000 affordable housing units each year to the residents of slum areas, was part of the Moroccan government's contribution to goal 7D of the Millennium Development Goals—to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2015. The effort is now part of Target 11 of the new Sustainable Development Goals—to ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services, including upgrading slums by 2030 (Huchzermeyer, 2011). The slum dwellers' courage, their creativity, and their practicality produced a globally recognized slum program that turned slum residents into homeowners. While this might indeed be part of what Roy (2010) calls “bottom billion capitalism,” the ability of the slum residents to resist their financialization and yet force the state to grant them tangible benefits is remarkable. It is precisely this kind of financial inclusion that many of the urban poor residing in megacities seek. In light of this, if there is anything to be celebrated about the VSB program, it is not its ability to produce slum-free cities, but rather, its ability to turn slum residents into property owners. Perhaps one day, when nonmovements become movements, and home ownership is accompanied by rights, we will be able to celebrate slum activism as a form of insurgent citizenship.

Fig. 6. After negotiations with most residents, the authorities cleared the alKora slum and constructed the apartments for rehousing. December 2016, photo by the author.

slum resident visibility and instead would recoginze their contribution to urban life, ask slum residents to come up with solutions they found amenable and to participate in their implementation on-site. In al-Kora, while the third phase of the project was scheduled to conclude in 2008, it remained problematic until the end of 2016, when the makhzen bulldozed the few remaining homes and forced the redevelopment of the waterfront land (see Fig. 6). In Zenata, the slum dwellers significantly delayed the plans for the new green city and successfully secured their right to housing within the parameters of the new city. They also negotiated for essential social services and for plots of land that they can build themselves as opposed to the pre-made apartments in al-Kora. While the developer was hoping to make the slum-residents invisible and remove them entirely from the pristine new green city's boundaries, the residents remain on the grounds and are now part of the European Union's marketing materials, as evidence of the city's sustainable social development. The state and the developers have had to make concessions to the slum populations; offering plots to those who refused to move initially and creating space for them in the new city. Business owners are also being compensated. While the residents did eventually have to leave their homes, their contestations led to concessions and delays and the community by and large will remain within the territory of Zenata. It is tempting to read the slum-dwellers response as “participating in collective organizing with a view to challenging their structural marginalization and defending their access to urban space” and therefore as a form of insurgent citizenship or alternative urban future (Gillespie, 2017:983). However, I believe that we must exercise caution in our optimistic reading of these incremental practices. Rather, we should account for these nonmovements as a form of “deradicalized dissent” that works to amend the existing social order rather than create a new one (Bayat, 2017). The slum dwellers are focused on “a strategy to outmaneuver the adversaries” and tangible outcomes (Bayat, 2017:111), not a new social order. Nonmovements “represent the collective action of noncollective actors, who are oriented more toward action than by being ideologically driven, concerned more with practice than protest” (Bayat, 2017:110). Yes, the contestations and resistances collectively can and did change the reality on the ground and socialize the state – they forced the authorities to come to terms with slumdwellers desires, nearly abandoning rehousing schemes and instead implementing a resettlement option that the slum residents much preferred. However, the slum-dwellers nonmovements did not connect up with a larger social movement nor did it allow slum residents to keep their homes. Instead their ability to “circumvent the constraints,

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