Cairo's Self-Planned Communities: Stigmatization, Representations, and Actions from Below

This thesis focuses on self-planned communities and aims at addressing external and internal representations of informal settlements, as well as the role of the everyday residents’ actions in terms of community creation and space use. These actions are discussed, emphasizing the disparity between how this informal settlement is externally perceived and how it functions. In doing so, the research addresses the case of the informal settlement of Ezbet Khairallah in Cairo, Egypt. By elaborating on secondary data analysis, qualitative interviews, field observations, and photographs, the thesis investigates two perspectives over the area: an external one, relating to authorities and outsiders, and an internal one, relating to residents and members of NGOs, portraying the residents of informal settlements as city dwellers that are part of the overall urban society. Informality is a global phenomenon that has existed throughout history and across civilizations. In many developing countries, urban informality accounts for a substantial portion, if not all, of employment and housing. Nevertheless, negative media depictions of informal areas associated with poverty, disease, disorder, or crime grow over time to encompass the entire location and the people associated with it, resulting in stigmatizing and marginalizing these areas, affecting the future of their residents. This work analyzes informal settlements through the lens of “people as infrastructure,” highlighting that people are the most powerful infrastructure a community needs to survive. The research also critically discusses perceptions about informal settlements shown through discursive constructions of the case study followed by presenting the residents’ internal perspective and their actions to satisfy their needs.