Living on the margins of the legal city in the southern periphery of Chennai : a case of cumulative marginalities
Résumé
Chapter 8 investigates issues faced by the people living in a precarious settlement located along a river canal in the southern periphery of Chennai, India. This case study shows how living on the urban margins can be understood as a condition that results primarily from economic deprivation and entails cumulative effects. The lack of economic resources pushes people to live in substandard settlements outside the legal sector. Vacant places to occupy are more likely to be available on the outskirts of a city, on non-building land such as the edge of water bodies in low-lying areas. The ensuing settlements are categorized as 'objectionable slums', under the constant threat of eviction. Such a geophysical location also exposes their dwellers to environmental risks, especially floods. These dwellers are furthermore stigmatized as encroachers, offenders and polluters, and, hence, are socially marginalized. After eviction, they are relocated to other marginal spaces in another substandard habitat. Lastly, among these multidimensional marginal urban dwellers, some prove to be more marginal than others, namely, the tenants, especially the migrants from the northern states of the country.