The city of the evicted: lives under pressure in the margins of an urban fantasy in Benin

Joël Noret

Oct 17

by Joël Noret & Narcisse M. Yedji

Since 2017, Cotonou – the economic capital of Benin – has witnessed several urban development projects. Aiming to showcase the city as the new face of a new Benin, attractive to both businessmen and tourists, the plans have involved extensive tarmacking projects, the development of the city's first shopping malls, the rebuilding of several markets to 'modern' standards, the erection of emblematic statues – notably that of 'the Amazon', branded as an ode to feminine courage and a national emblem –, and the design of a new coast line. The urban poor have paid a disproportionate price in the implementation of this new urban fantasy – that is, a shiny urban renovation project disconnected from the sociological realities of the city and from the needs of whole swathes of its population, especially in the urban precariat.

In what follows, we argue that the successive waves of evictions of thousands of poor urban dwellers have pressurized in multiple ways and in the longer run already fragile existences. As neighbourhoods and livelihood were dislocated, their ex-residents were simultaneously witnessing their life chances shrinking for the foreseeable future, and faced with the traumatic aftermath of dislocated homes. A 'generative' process in itself, as Gunvór Jonsson recently argued on this blog about evictions in Dakar, there is no doubt that state pressure grounded in neoliberal urbanism affects the urban poor in multiple ways. The following paragraphs explore such multi-layered consequences, from degraded economic conditions to tarnished senses of one's place in the social world.