Informal Settlements and Urban Migration in the Pacific

Korson Cadey, Oulu

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Globalization has accelerated cultural poverty, the commodification of indigenous knowledges, food insecurity, and the exploitation of resources. As a result increasing numbers of indigenous peoples are moving to urban slum settlements where they face unemployment, discrimination, and further exclusion. A growing movement for what Lefebvre and Harvey call the "right to the city" advocates for a democratic and participatory approach to urban governance and planning. Through interviews with slum settlement inhabitants in the Pacific, community leaders, politicians, and scholars, this research examines how indigenous migrants are recreating communities, the impact of migration and squatting on their culture, and develop participatory approaches to improving conditions in slums. Indigenous peoples in the United States, the Pacific, and elsewhere struggle with adequate representation, quality of life, and poverty. This research aims to work with indigenous communities to develop policies on affordable and sustainable housing and the protection and celebration of indigenous culture in cities that can inform indigenous struggles for inclusion elsewhere. This research will build on a series of interviews, focus groups, participant observation, and mental mapping activities to analyze the development of informal settlements in urban peripheries. This project examines patterns of internal indigenous migration to urban areas, the extent to which migrants continue to participate in the activities in their home communities and maintain kinship networks, and how migrants are recreating community and a sense of urban indigenous identity in informal settlements. Finally, the concept of the "right to the city" is applied to identifying participatory approaches to improving conditions in informal settlements, creating affordable and sustainable housing alternatives, and empowering squatter inhabitants and the indigenous community to reshape the urban landscape in a way that celebrates their identity and values. Indigenous participants should have a voice in the planning and development of their homes and communities. By highlighting their ideas and supporting activism among community groups, this research seeks to cultivate participatory urban planning that meets the particular needs of indigenous islanders. The resulting strategies can be implemented in other urban environments with marginalized populations and informal settlements. These spaces should not be simply labeled as crime ridden, impoverished, or illegal. They are also spaces of innovation, indigenous knowledge, community, and belonging that can offer new strategies for a better mode of urban governance that improves the lives of inhabitants rather than excludes them.