Category: Pressure

Living in the shadows of Dubai

Jonathan NgehLeave a comment

Figure 1:. Dubai Marina, an affluent residential area in New Dubai. Photograph by Jonathan Ngeh, 2015.  

By achieving economic success while embracing market friendly policies: lower taxes, free trade, privatization and deregulation, Dubai has earned the reputation as a neoliberal success story. As it is typical of neoliberal economic policies, economic growth has not trickled down to the people at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. Rather, inequality has been reenforced, and Dubai consists of two distinct parts: 鈥極ld鈥� Dubai housing and representing the distressed and economically disadvantaged, and 鈥楴ew鈥� Dubai where the economically and politically powerful live (see Figure 1 and 2).听 Existence of poverty alongside wealth puts pressure on both poor and rich city residents. Among the poor, the kind of pressure they face usually is related to the lack of money to provide basic needs for themselves and their dependents, as highlighted in Dawson鈥檚 remarks on Johannesburg (Dawson 2020). On the other hand, the rich (and also the poor) face pressure caused by challenges that are psychological or social or both. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with mostly African migrants in Dubai in 2015 and 2020, focusing particularly on their housing and labour market conditions, this piece鈥檚 central argument is that the extreme inequality in Dubai puts economic pressure on low-income migrants, the city鈥檚 poorest residents, while the juxtapositions of poverty and wealth right next to each other exert psychological pressure on the wealthy by instigating fear of low-income migrants because of crime concerns.

Figure 2: Deira, a district in Old Dubai where many low-income migrants live. Photograph by Jonathan Ngeh, 2015.  

With migrants accounting for over 80 percent of the population in Dubai and the UAE (de Bel-Air 2015, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2019), the city and country stand out as a leading immigration destination in the world. While some of the Africans I encountered in the UAE travelled for studies or tourism, the vast majority of them had migrated for economic reasons鈥搃n search of employment or with the intention to establish their own businesses. Convinced by the prospects of greener pastures in Dubai, these economic migrants spent their savings to pay for the migration journey. In some cases, migrants or family members borrowed money at high interest rates to cover the cost of migration. In either case, the financial obligations of African labour migrants in Dubai increased because of migration. Upon arrival in Dubai, they were shocked to realise that opportunities are limited and the living conditions for the majority of migrant workers are unbearable.

Read More »

Inner-city pressure and living somewhere in-between听

afroeuropeanstudiesLeave a comment

On a cold winter鈥檚 day in 2014, I sat awkwardly in the office of the person managing a high-rise apartment building in Johannesburg鈥檚 Central Business District (CBD). The building is a former office block that has been renovated by the city鈥檚 largest private affordable housing company and is currently rented as residential accommodation. Affordable housing is commercial rental housing that caters to people who earn too much to qualify for state-subsidised housing, otherwise known as social housing, but too little to purchase their own properties on the regular market. Rents in the building in which this incident took place range from R1325 (拢65 or Ksh9695) for a studio room to R3589 (拢174 or Ksh26261) for a 2-bedroom apartment. I was in the building to interview the manager about the ins and outs of her job, and to then interview tenants living there. However, our interview was interrupted by a distraught tenant. She was visibly upset, and I soon realised that she had been locked out of her apartment. Unfortunately, this was not an exceptional situation. The housing company, like others working in Johannesburg鈥檚 inner-city, use lock-outs, or the threat thereof, to ensure that tenants pay their rent. , I had frequently heard about the threat of lock-outs, but this was my first time witnessing the effects of one actually being enforced. Several building managers had told me that they find ways to avoid having to implement them, negotiating with tenants or giving them advanced warning so that they have time to scrounge money together to make a payment and stave off punishment. In this case, however, all efforts to prevent the lock-out had failed. It was the middle of the month, and rent, usually due on the 1st, still had not been paid. The building manager therefore had no choice but to adhere to the demands of her job, even though this had obviously disturbing and upsetting consequences. However, to mitigate the harm caused to the tenant and her young child, the manager, who also lives in the building, arranged for them to sleep in her own apartment that night, whilst they tried to locate some funds to begin repaying the debt. In this case, the pressures induced by fluctuating fortunes and a ruthless cost-recovery business model, as well as the strain to personal relations and consciences this induces, became stark.  

Although people living in affordable housing generally have stable salaries and employment, as the incident above shows, they too can experience downturns in luck, lose money and jobs and find themselves out on the street. Thus, whilst the plight of chronically un(der)employed people and those living in informal settlements is cause for concern and rightly receives much critical attention, it is important to bear in mind that the middle-classes too are caught between . In what follows, I trace the (pre-covid-19) experiences of people living in social and affordable housing in inner-city Johannesburg. As will become clear, their lives are shaped by economic pressure, as they work hard to pay their rent and forgo other forms of social interaction whilst striving to get by. At the same time, they also encounter other forms of pressure, as they contend with difficult and unpleasant environments and navigate spaces marked by fear of crime and concerns about safety.  

Other pieces in this blog series have argued that pressure can be theorised as an imbalance between (real or imagined) economic demands and concomitant abilities to fulfil them. However, imbalances also extend beyond economic concerns and encompass desires about living situations, ease of daily life, and safety and security. In inner-city Johannesburg, pressure emanates from the fact that the prevailing urban reality does not match people鈥檚 aspirations for central accommodation that is close to jobs, schools and social services, but also provides comfort, peace of mind and liveable environments. Faced with this mismatch or imbalance between aspirations and reality, people are forced to live in-between, to reside somewhere and make do, whilst aspiring to be elsewhere, but simultaneously knowing that there are few avenues through which this aspiration can be realised. The cumulative effects of this pressure is a form of resignation and detachment, a sense of living in-between and accepting what one can get from a vastly unequal socio-economic landscape.  

Read More »

Less flow, more pressure: accessing water in N鈥橠jamena in times of Covid-19

ismaelmaazazLeave a comment

鈥淵ou need pressure to make water flow鈥�

Pressure is not always a metaphor for 鈥渃onstraints鈥� or 鈥渂urden鈥�; it is also a concrete and basic requirement for municipal water supply. Across many cities of the Global South, end-users, city officials, development NGO professionals or agents of the water business (street porters, water fountain managers or public water tap owners) struggle to provide and access water services 鈥� a process often characterized by negotiation and contestation. In N鈥橠jamena, Chad, hardships linked to everyday water access fuel two distinct paradoxes. First, maintaining water pressure is a constant source of economic pressure. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, end-users were already compelled to adapt their 鈥渉ydraulic habits鈥� to their needs and financial resources. Evidence on the ground indicates that the pandemic has introduced a second paradox: the Chadian state has taken official steps to mitigate economic pressure in the daily life of inhabitants in Chad funding a 6 month free water policy, but this has done little in practice beyond decreasing the water pressure (the necessary force that pushes water through pipe, makes it flow and available to end-users) for N鈥橠jamenois who need it most. As such, this blog post argues that economic pressure for the poor has increased while water pressure has dropped as a result of the pandemic and a government intervention that explicitly aimed at addressing the issue Quite predictably, the pandemic has generated additional economic constraints on informal businesses and might have complicated an already knotty landscape in addition to tremendous climate-related problems, foremost among them flooding. However, available evidence suggests that the policy designed to alleviate the burden of bills on those in need failed. Instead of increasing water availability, it reduced and in some cases even cut the water flow. The limited extension of the water supply network also made the policy pointless to many, while wealthier end-users connected to the water supply network enjoyed the policy as a bonanza. This demonstrates that infrastructural expansion, not just emergency funding, is critical to any meaningful water and sanitation improvements.

Read More »

(De)pressurizing in urban centers beyond the megacity: notes on pressure from Nakuru, Kenya

Nick Rahier1 Comment

On the 21st of November 2020, Mumbi Seraki – a YouTuber – uploads a new 鈥榩rophetic update鈥� titled . Her YouTube shows are followed by more than 60 000 followers across Sub Saharan Africa and deal with, what she refers to as, the ills of society, the struggles of African nations and ideas for a better Africa. She opens her 鈥榩rophetic update鈥� with the following statement:

鈥淚 really do pray that you are well in all your ways and that you are moving into living life truly on your own terms and out of the 鈥榤atrix鈥�, so that you can be free and you won鈥檛 have to become one of these mask wearing zombies walking around. Really, get out of the big cities, if you can, don鈥檛 wait till the last minute.鈥�

Seraki鈥檚 statements should be interpreted against the background of the Covid-19 havoc that raises questions about how safe it is to live in major cities such as Nairobi where most Covid-19 cases are being reported. Nonetheless, the image of cities populated by 鈥榸ombies鈥� affirms questions about the (in)habitability of Kenyan cities increasingly beleaguered by the pressures and absurdities of late capitalism that were already relevant way before the pandemic. Her advice to liberate oneself from the 鈥榤atrix鈥� of life in the capital by moving upcountry is particularly intriguing and will be further unpacked hereinafter.  

In this blogpost, I shed light on life 鈥榰nder pressure鈥� from the perspective of Nakuru, a vibrant secondary Kenyan city of approximately 500, 000 inhabitants situated 160 km Northwest of Nairobi, where I conducted more than 18 months of ethnographic research. My fieldwork shed light on how people in Nakuru made sense of their urban lifeworlds, yet did so with 鈥榟eat鈥�, a leitmotiv illuminating different 鈥榗onfrontations鈥� about a variety of opposing or cohesive uses, ideas and/or meanings of technologies, symbols, and substances that flow through the highland city.

Read More »

鈥淯nder pressure鈥�: negotiating competing demands and desires in a time of precarious earnings

HjD1 Comment

A few years ago, during a year of ethnographic fieldwork with young un(der)employed men in a poor shack settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg, I found myself sitting in Senzo鈥檚 one-room shack on a foldout camping chair. It was a hot Wednesday afternoon. Popular R&B music was blaring into the air from the nearby tavern. Senzo sat on his double bed. Soon after I arrived, Senzo handed me an ornate invitation with gold foil on the sides and his name on it. It was an invitation to the wedding of his cousin that was set to take place the following weekend. I asked Senzo if he planned to go. 鈥淚鈥檓 not going鈥�, he told me, explaining that he had declined the invitation because, as he put it, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to put more pressure on myself鈥� describing the difficulties he already had paying rent, keeping up with outstanding debts, and supporting his girlfriend and children. Going to the wedding would require him to buy a fancy suit and a gift for the couple. This required money he didn鈥檛 have. The 鈥減ressure鈥� Senzo described was not just the monetary cost of attending the wedding. It was also the feeling (what Senzo called 鈥渟tress鈥�) of being overburdened by competing demands on his money including buying consumer items, sending his children to good schools, and supporting family members. To understand the continuous “pressure” young men like Senzo face requires we give attention to the changing nature of work and the changing world of families in contemporary South Africa. As I show below the pressures young black un(der)employed men experience are at once economic and social given the pressure they face to not only 鈥減rovide鈥� for themselves and their families exists alongside a pressure to improve or 鈥渦pgrade鈥� their lives. As such, I show how the   鈥渋ncome-demands gap鈥� (a key catalyst of 鈥減ressure鈥�) in young men鈥檚 lives is produced in and through specific (increasingly temporary rather than enduring) social relations and ties. 

Read More »

鈥楲ife On These Stones Is Very Hard鈥� 鈥� House Helps in Covid-19 Nairobi

marioatschmidtLeave a comment
Photo: Eric Kioko, August 2020.

By Mario Schmidt,听Christiane Stephan, Kawikya Judith Musa听补苍诲 Eric M. Kioko听

Panic! Rush! Empty sacks! Women running! Big cars passing by! Boom! All women stare at the same spot on the road: a car passing by. Within seconds, many of them rush towards it. One who was selling roasted maize, water and a few more goods leaves her place of work opposite the road and runs towards the vehicle as well. Panic and competition are in the air. Within a few minutes, the women come back, discouragement and lack of morale palpable in their bodies and faces. 鈥淲hat happened?鈥�, one of those left seated asks. 鈥淭he driver didn鈥檛 think we were this many, so he closed the car麓s door and left!鈥�

This scene gives insight into dynamic moments taking place along the roadsides of Nairobi鈥檚 affluent suburbs since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. It displays the intensified competition characterizing the job market for informal house helps looking for work and financial or material assistance. Suburbs like Kileleshwa or Kilimani present an unusual picture to those accustomed to see African cities through photographs of slums and shantytowns. Yet, here we have elegant residential areas mushroomed in leafy environments, roads with pedestrian walkways for cycling and jogging, cosmopolitan coffee joints, posh malls, and police patrols.

Read More »

鈥淭here is a Lot of Pressure on Me. It’s Like the Distance Between Heaven and Earth鈥� – Landscapes of Debt, Poverty-in-People and Social Atomization in Covid-19 Nairobi

marioatschmidtLeave a comment
Photo: Jack Omondi Misiga

By Mario Schmidt, Eric Kioko, Evelyn Atieno Owino and Christiane Stephan

Everyday economic life in Nairobi has been transformed following the COVID-19 containment measures installed by the Kenyan government. In the immediate aftermath of Kenya鈥檚 first case reported on 13th March 2020, President Uhuru Kenyatta shut down air travel, introduced a nationwide curfew for the night hours, introduced a mask requirement, reduced passenger numbers in public transport, closed schools and institutions of higher learning and restricted social gathering. These measures set in motion transformations that span across various networks and scales of the urban. In order to analyze the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on urban households, we have teamed up with five Kenyan colleagues who conducted over two hundred qualitative interviews in different locales of Nairobi and Nakuru. In Nairobi, our assistants, who made sure that measures of COVID-19 containment and personal safety were respected, worked in the informal settlement Kibera, the low-income tenement settlement Pipeline (Embakasi), and Kileleshwa, home to richer Nairobians and expats. Our research assistants interviewed Nairobians from the age of twenty to over eighty years. Among the respondents were migrants and people born in Nairobi, casual, unemployed and laid-off workers, maids, housewives, Uber drivers, white collar workers, shop owners, club bouncers, artists, daycare owners, tailors who found a new job producing face masks, waiters, chefs as well as people employed by NGOs. 

Read More »

Blog Series: Pressure in the City

黑料社区2 Comments

cheng-feng-RUJHNe8Jyu8-unsplash

The Covid-19 pandemic and the restructuring of the global economy it has triggered have exacerbated the need to study a topic that has flown under the radar of social scientists for too long: individuals and social groups experiencing economic pressure which manifests in myriad of somatic and psychological ways. The fallout from pressure 鈥� sleeplessness, ulcers, an atmosphere of hopelessness and social mistrust, gambling, suicides, as well as a growing concern about a lack of mental health facilities in cities of the Global South 鈥� now pervades urban as well as rural environments around the world. This blog series aims at taking a fresh look at the phenomenon of economic pressure through a decisively comparative and interdisciplinary approach. We will critically interrogate the role of economic pressure in the lives of both the rich and the poor, the unemployed and the workforce, across class and continents in order to answer, among others, the following questions:

  • What meanings does economic pressure take on as it travels between different contexts?
  • How do city dwellers of diverse class, religious and gender backgrounds experience pressure听in their professional and private lives? How do they accommodate, negotiate and deflect听pressure?
  • Does economic pressure offer new analytical possibilities vis-脿-vis other concepts used to听describe similar phenomena (e.g. poverty, uncertainty, precarity etc.)?
  • What is the relation between individually perceived economic pressure and structural听changes of the economy or polity?
  • What moral valuations do urban residents assign to economic pressure? What logics听underpin 鈥榞ood鈥� and 鈥榖ad鈥� forms of pressure?
  • How can inter-disciplinary methodological and/or theoretical approaches deepen our听understanding of economic pressure 鈥攖he forms it assumes, the actions it motivates and the听effects it generates?

We welcome contributions from a wide range of scientific disciplines (political economy, anthropology, economics, sociology, development studies, gender studies, international relations, geography, etc.) as well as other professions (such as practicing psychologists, counselors, activists, bankers, sports professionals etc.). As the blog鈥檚 organizers are all Africanists, the blog will, however, have an initial focus on sub-Saharan and, especially, Eastern Africa. We are confident that this will be balanced over time.

  • Pressure in the City: Stress, Worry and Anxiety in Times of Economic Crisis. The first contribution to the series, written by J枚rg Wiegratz, Catherine Dolan, Wangui Kimari and Mario Schmidt will detail the rationale of the series and provide necessary background information and context.
  • Urban Africa under Stress: Rethinking Economic Pressure in Cities. Written by the same four scholars, this post explains in more detail the objectives of our blog series intervention, and our observations regarding pressure as a social phenomenon in a capitalist city in the Global South. It introduces Nairobi as a city of pressure and critically discusses the scholarship on economic pressure. As such, it acts as an introduction to subsequent blogs on Nairobi as a city of pressure.
  • 鈥楾here is a Lot of Pressure on Me. It鈥檚 Like the Distance Between Heaven and Earth鈥� – Landscapes of Debt, Poverty-in-People and Social Atomization in Covid-19 Nairobi. Written by Mario Schmidt, Eric Kioko, Evelyn Atieno Owino, and Christiane Stephan. This post sheds light on the multidimensional ways in which Kenya鈥檚 political elite鈥檚 response to the Covid-19 pandemic has increased economic pressure on actors living in informal and low-income settlements of Nairobi (Kibera and Pipeline). It will be followed by a second post exploring the effects of the pandemic on inhabitants of Kileleshwa, a wealthier suburb of Nairobi.
  • 鈥楲ife On These Stones Is Very Hard鈥� 鈥� House Helps in Covid-19 Nairobi. Written by Eric M. Kioko, Judith K. Musa, Mario Schmidt and Christiane Stephan, this blog focuses on the economic pressure experienced by women who lost jobs as house helps following the Covid-19 pandemic and how they manoeuvre their new economic situation within Nairobi鈥檚 richer suburbs.
  • 鈥淯nder pressure鈥�: negotiating competing demands and desires in a time of precarious earnings. Written by Hannah Dawson, this post examines the social and economic pressures faced by un(der)employed young men in an informal settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg. It highlights the multiplicity of demands on young men鈥檚 precarious incomes and the tension they experience from the simultaneous pressure to consume and improve their own lives while at the same time providing for their families and children.
  • (De)pressurizing in urban centers beyond the megacity: notes on pressure from Nakuru, Kenya. Written by Nick Rahier, this post sheds light on life 鈥榰nder pressure鈥� from the perspective of Nakuru, a vibrant secondary Kenyan city situated 160 km Northwest of Nairobi. It presents Nakuru as a place where pressure manifests itself as a highly volatile and affective state of being that is rich in meaning about what it means to (de)pressurize beyond the megacities.
  • Less flow, more pressure: accessing water in N鈥橠jamena in times of Covid-19. Written by Isma毛l Maazaz, this blog post looks at state policies designed to mitigate the economic pressure weighting on water end-users of N鈥橠jamena, the capital of Chad in the midst of the pandemics in 2020. Such policies adversely affected the actual pipe water pressure, generating additional challenges.
  • Inner-city pressure and living somewhere in-between. Written by Aidan Mosselson, this blog post traces the (pre-covid-19) experiences of people living in social and affordable housing in inner-city Johannesburg. Inner-city residents contend with economic pressure, as they work hard to pay their rent and often forgo other forms of social interaction whilst they strive to get by. But pressures are also more-than-economic, and emanate from difficult and unpleasant environments and concerns about safety. Combined, these pressures create a state of resignation and being in-between, of living in an undesirable area, aspiring to be elsewhere, but unable to find somewhere better and still affordable.
  • Living in the shadows of Dubai. Written by Jonathan Ngeh, this blog post draws on the lived experiences of African migrants in Dubai to shed light on how economic inequality increases pressure on low-income migrants. Furthermore, it reveals how the existence of poverty alongside wealth puts pressure on not only the poor but also on the wealthy city residents.
  • Pressure to Succeed: From Prosperity, Stress (A reflection on aspiration in the new Kenya). Written by Peter Lockwood, the blog post draws attention towards the subjective experience of pressure to succeed, to ‘make it’, and live a good life, by Kenyan youth living on the northern outskirts of Nairobi. Departing from a purely economic understanding of pressure in the city, the blog highlights the feelings of shame and failure harboured by Kenyan youth unable to accumulate the wealth that would allow them to live good lives according to mainstream understandings of economic success’.
  • . Written by Mario Schmidt, tries to听open a space for critical debates about how capitalism affects gender relations by exploring the relations between the sorrows of heterosexual migrant Kenyan men who increasingly feel under pressure and Nairobi’s blossoming sphere of toxic masculinity consultancy.
  • Layers of compounding pressure: the gendered experiences of rural migrant youth in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.听Written by Elizabeth Dessie, this blogpost explores the gendered ways in which rural-urban migrant youth experience pressure in a post-pandemic Addis Ababa, highlighting how strategies devised to counteract pressure are central to migrants’ everyday lives, despite synchronously creating new layers of social and economic strain.听 听
  • The Salaried Man and His Others: Rethinking Pressure in the Longue Dur茅e. Written by Jordanna Matlon, this blog post situates the social and economic pressures that underemployed men experience in African urban informal economies within the longue dur茅e听of racial colonial capitalism and its accordant breadwinning ideology. To do so, it introduces the听colon听(colonist) statue, a听fixture of West African popular art and figurative embodiment of colonial-era social and economic transformations in which masculinity became inextricably linked to the salary.听 听听
  • Working Overtime or Being Laid Off: The Pressure under Hopelessness among Workers in Chinese Internet Companies. Written by Yun Xiong, this blog aims to investigate the relation between the immense working overtime pressure of workers in Internet companies in China鈥檚 big cities and the feelings of hopelessness regarding career and life prospects amid the country鈥檚 economic downturn. This, in turn, drives the phenomenon of excessive workloads as workers strive to avoid the risk of being laid off.
  • What Pressure Produces: The Generative Aspects of Pressure amidst Urban Displacement in Dakar. This blog post by Gunvor J贸nsson explores what is produced by pressure, examining how traders evicted from a market in Dakar (Senegal) responded to persistent uncertainty and economic pressure following the demolition of their market. It argues that the economic uncertainty and sense of disorientation and uprootedness associated with the eviction had led to a kind of urban diasporic formation among the displaced traders. The analysis thus contributes a temporal perspective on pressure, showing what urban dwellers鈥� responses to pressure may generate in the longer term.
  • The city of the evicted: lives under pressure in the margins of an urban fantasy in Benin. Written by Jo毛l Noret and Narcisse Yedji, the blog post explores the multi-layered consequences of the eviction campaigns that have taken place in Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin, since current president Patrice Talon came to power. Generating multiple and intertwined forms of pressures, such destructions have turned thousands of lives upside down, causing considerable psychic distress while durably affecting the life chances and economic prospects of already vulnerable city dwellers.
  • Absorbing pressure: Bodily 鈥榯ension鈥� in a changing Himalayan world. Written by Nikita Simpson, this piece examines how such pressures are not evenly distributed across the community but are absorbed by particular people through the experience of bodily and mental tension. Tension, Simpson argues, both registers these pressures in the body, and allows people to push back against them, issuing a particular and paradoxical account of power and the body.

Blog series editors:

J枚rg Wiegratz is a Lecturer in Political Economy of Global Development at the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, and Senior Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg. j.wiegratz@leeds.ac.uk.

Elizabeth听Dessie is a postdoctoral fellow at the African Cities Research Consortium at the University of Manchester.听elizabeth.dessie@manchester.ac.uk.

Catherine Dolan is Professor in Anthropology at SOAS, University of London. cd17@soas.ac.uk

Wangui Kimari is a Postdoctoral researcher at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. kuikimari@gmail.com

Mario Schmidt is postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle/Saale, Germany). marioatschmidt@gmail.com

Photo by on