Collaborative Research: Social Construction of Legal Exclusion in Slums

本项目调查在法律承认的贫民窟住区和不承认的贫民窟住区中，社会如何形成法律的排斥。 广泛的研究表明，在全球范围内，贫民窟居民在贫困、就业条件和遭受暴力等主要社会指标方面的结果比正式居住的城市人口差得多。 尽管人们认识到，法律的地位对贫民窟居民的社会经济状况有着重大影响，但人们对政府为何不给予正式承认并拒绝贫民窟居民获得维持生命的基础设施和居住安全却知之甚少。 本研究探讨了法律的排斥是如何被建构的-作为一个政治和官僚实体，作为一个地理和社会现实，以及作为个人的生活经验。 该项目的三个研究目标是：查明造成未得到承认的贫民窟居民遭受法律的排斥的多层次因素;说明法律的排斥作为一种集体和个人现象如何影响贫民窟居民的福祉;并通过将贫民窟住区与不同的行政和法律的背景进行比较，将法律的排斥的影响与非正规住区的其他更广泛研究的方面区分开来。多层次的研究设计建立在对贫民窟社会排斥和政治行动的民族志研究的见解之上，表明法律的排斥不仅是通过政策和公共话语在宏观层面产生的，而且是通过与当地管理人员、警察和服务提供人员的谈判在社区层面产生的;以及在微观层面，贫民窟居民的内心生活和主观体验。这种方法植根于社会学长期以来的努力，即将社会结构的宏观理论与社会行动的微观分析相结合，以解释集体和个人的结果。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project investigates how legal exclusion is socially constructed in legally recognized vs. non-recognized slum settlements. Extensive research has demonstrated that residents of slum settlements globally have considerably worse outcomes on key social indicators, including poverty, employment conditions, and exposure to violence, than formally housed urban populations. Despite the recognition that legal status has significant impacts on the socioeconomic conditions of slum residents, little is known about why governments withhold official recognition and deny access to life-supporting infrastructure and residential security for slum residents. This research investigates how legal exclusion is constructed--as a political and bureaucratic entity, as a geographic and social reality, and as individual lived experience. It is also designed to explain how conditions vary in communities with different degrees of legal recognition and access.The project's three research aims are to identify the multi-level factors that produce the legal exclusion experienced by residents of non-recognized slums; demonstrate how legal exclusion is experienced as both a collective and individual level phenomenon that shapes the wellbeing of slum residents; and disentangle the effects of legal exclusions from other, more widely studied aspects of informal settlements, by comparing slum settlements with different administrative and legal contexts. The multi-level research design builds on insights from ethnographic research on social exclusion and political action in slums showing that legal exclusion is not only produced at the macro-level through policy and public discourse, but also at the community-level through negotiations with local administrators, police officers, and service delivery workers; and at the micro-level within the inner lives and subjective experiences of slum residents. This approach is rooted in longstanding efforts in sociology to integrate macro theories of social structure with micro-level analyses of social action to explain collective and individual outcomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.