Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

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Cities
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Refusing a “City without Slums”: Moroccan slum dwellers' nonmovements

and the art of presence
Mona Atia
The George Washington University, 1957 E Street NW, Suite 512, Washington, DC 20052, United States of America

ABSTRACT

In June 2018, as a result of a program known as “Villes Sans Bidonvilles” (VSB) or “Cities without Slums,” the Kingdom of Morocco declared 58 of 85 cities across the
country as slum-free. This paper analyzes the “pockets of resistance” that the Kingdom of Morocco has faced in the implementation of the VSB program. I assert that
the contestations and acts of resistance pursued by slum-dwellers are an art of presence – “the ability of the subaltern subjects to assert their collective will in spite of
all odds, to circumvent the constraints, utilizing what is possible, and discover new spaces within which to make themselves heard, seen, felt and realized” (Bayat,
2017:111). The art of presence is “the fundamental movement in the life of nonmovements,” therefore I combine the two concepts to argue that slum-dwellers
responded to the VSB in incremental/spontaneous and organized/strategic ways, and in doing so they forced the authorities to change their approach against all
odds. Using two case studies, I demonstrate how slum dwellers' responses to the rehousing scheme delayed the VSB process by a number of years, and in fact made the
authorities offer a resettlement option (recasement) that was preferable to the residents. As slum dwellers resisted the intervention of the state and used tactics of
refusal, protest, and grassroots organizing, they turned urban space into a site of contention, and made claims to that space despite being “dispersed, unorganized and
atomized” (Bayat, 2017:106). The social ‘nonmovement’ of the slum-dwellers led to tangible benefits for them, and led to the “socialization of the state” through the
replacement of the government rehousing program with a resettlement scheme that they preferred. They therein resisted the state's attempt to make them invisible,
eradicate their built environment and inculcate them into proper neoliberal development subjects. Their resistance was not a form of radical, insurgent citizenship,
but rather a form of “deradicalized dissent” that amended the existing order instead of producing a new one. Against all odds, the art of presence of the slum-dwellers
induced a dramatic change in housing policy in their favor.

1. Introduction authorities to change their approach against all odds.

At the start of the “Villes Sans Bidonvilles” (VSB) or “Cities without
Slums” program in 2004, the Moroccan Ministry of housing deemed
nearly five million Moroccans were living in “low quality housing”
(Moroccan Ministry of Housing, 2017). In June 2018, as a result of the
program, the Kingdom of Morocco declared 58 of 85 cities across the
country as slum-free. Nearly two million Moroccans still live in some
form of informal housing, often without sanitation and sometimes
without water supply or electricity (Moroccan Ministry of Housing,
2017). 1.3 million of that two million are said to live in bidonville
(shantytown/slum) 1, defined by the government as settlements that
consist of homes of precarious construction with insecure land tenure;
these are homes built with temporary materials like sheet metal and
other recyclable materials (UN Habitat, 2003; see Fig. 1). In this paper I
argue that slum-dwellers responded to the VSB in incremental/spon-
taneous and organized/strategic ways, and in doing so they forced the
While the bidonville is not the only type of slum in Morocco, it is
seen as the “most emblematic type of slum” and the central target for
the VSB program (Navins-Bouchanine, 2003:8). Most of the targeted
homes are less than two stories with corrugated metal rooftops, while
mid-rise and brick or concrete structures remain outside the VSB pro-
gram, regardless of their land-tenure status. Since 2003, and largely in
response to the Casablanca bombings, the government has attempted to
better integrate marginalized populations into the social fabric and to
develop programs that might ameliorate the escalating housing crisis
that has plagued Moroccan cities (Zemni & Bogaert, 2011). However,
ignoring urban blight until it became a security threat had dire con-
sequences for the states' ability to address its “slum problem.”
It is under the banner of housing reform that the Ministry launched
the flagship VSB program as a security-centered approach to system-
atically eliminate slums from Morocco. The program consists of three
strategies that were pursued in phases: phase one was upgrading, phase

E-mail address: atia@gwu.edu.

1
A vast literature critiques the nomenclature of the terms slum and slum-dwellers as inadequate and leading to distortions (Arabindoo, 2011; Roy, 2011). The
terminology is problematic because they “homogenize and stigmatize a global urban population” and “squashes people into totalizing characterizations and in that
reductive way, reproduce an over determination of urban poverty that has difficulty recognizing emergent spaces of invention and agency.” (Holston, 2009:249).
However, it is precisely this emergent agency and creativity that I wish to highlight in this article. Therefore, while I concur with the critiques of the terminology slum
and slum-dwellers, I deploy the terms for the lack of a better alternative and to signal to the reader the subject of the paper.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.02.014
Received 7 February 2018; Received in revised form 9 February 2019; Accepted 16 February 2019
0264-2751/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Mona Atia, Cities, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.02.014

M. Atia Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

risky and the prices as prohibitively expensive. As one official stated “In
my opinion, the VSB project is a failure because there are many families
that are so poor they cannot even afford to pay 20,000 MAD (ap-
proximately $2,100 USD)” (author interview, Ministry of Urban Policy,
May 8, 2015). Given slum dwellers reluctance to accept the program,
the rehousing scheme is largely viewed (even by the government) as a
failure and accounts for less than 10% of the VSB program (author
interview, Ministry of Housing, April 6, 2015).
A second reason for the limited success of the rehousing scheme was
the lack of consideration of slum residents' needs. According to one civil
society association,
“When Dyar Mansour built the apartments they did not think at all
about the social needs of the place, parking, transportation, schools,
a hospital, corner-store, or bathhouse. They just built housing
without any banks, soccer fields, etc. There is nothing there in terms
of social life. The quality of the apartments is also not great, so
among the people who moved they are now protesting because of
this issue. Whenever there is a problem they have to fix it on their
Fig. 1. Remaining slum dwellings in al-Kora, January 2016, photo by the au- own expense”.
thor. (author interview, Association, May 8, 2015)
Slum residents proclaimed that the apartments offered to them were too
two was rehousing and phase three was resettlement. The stated goal of
small, poorly constructed and ill-equipped, and so many residents re-
the program was to provide decent housing for the over 200,000
fused them. Despite their vulnerability, the population actively con-
households living in urban slums initially by 2010, a deadline that was
tested and resisted their management, financialization and displace-
prolonged several times (Moroccan Ministry of Housing, n.d.). The
ment.
program both incorporates and replaces some of the pre-existing stra-
Instead of forcing residents to take up loans and reside in mid-rise
tegies for dealing with slum populations. The predominant strategy for
apartment buildings built through private-public-partnerships, the state
addressing slum areas before VSB was in situ upgrading (restructuation)
began offering resettlement (recasement) to slum residents using plots of
to improve the basic infrastructure of slums, including widening roads,
land that the residents could build on themselves (with particular
improved plumbing and sanitation, and the provision of electricity. A
parameters). Resettlement gave land to slum residents for 20,000 MAD
local representative of one of the largest slum redevelopment compa-
(approximately $2100 USD). Two slum residents were assigned one
nies discussed some of the issues with this prior strategy: “Upgrading
80 m2 plot of land on which they were authorized to build a commer-
was not successful. There was financing problems and the slum dwellers
cially zoned ground floor unit plus a three-story apartment building
wanted to benefit from the apartments or plots so we stopped doing
(R + 3, see Fig. 3). The resettlement program was created to respond to
slum upgrading” (author interview, August 5, 2015).
the failures of the prior rehousing program and was quite popular
In contrast to previous strategies of slum development, VSB began
among slum residents because of its affordability, the prospect of be-
as a rehousing (relodgement) scheme to move slum residents from slum
coming landowners, no requirement to go into debt, and the potential
barracks in the center of the city to five-story apartments in the per-
for income-generation. The biggest obstacle to this program was the
iphery (see Fig. 2). The rehousing approach asks slum residents to make
fact that very few slum dwellers had the cash to actually build their new
a security deposit on an apartment that costs 200,000 MAD (approxi-
homes. With deadlines to relocate within six months of signing the
mately $21,000 USD) and to take out a mortgage on the remaining
agreement, slum dwellers turned to third-party developers to cover the
balance. While the government sponsored a loan qualification program
to make mortgages accessible to the population, slum dwellers, who are
largely employed in the informal economy, saw the loans as overly

Fig. 2. Apartments offered to but largely declined by slum residents in Ain

Harrouda, outside the boundary of Zenata, the new green city. Photo by the Fig. 3. The rehousing option (R + 3) permits slum residents to construct their
author. own homes on plots of land outside the city center.

2
M. Atia
construction costs (Toutain & Rachmuhl, 2014). Often times, they
would agree to give the developer the ground floor or third apartment
in exchange for them covering construction costs. While this exchange
was technically illegal, the state, well aware of the arrangement, turned
a blind eye.2
Despite these issues, the VSB initiative has received significant in-
ternational recognition. UN Habitat and other multilateral agencies
including the World Bank have declared VSB a grand success and
heralded the program as a replicable and scalable model for other
governments in the region (World Bank, 2006). The Ministries of
Housing in Tunisia and Egypt have already begun to copy the protocol,
and UN Habitat called the program “the best of its kind in Africa,”
awarding Morocco second place after Indonesia, “for delivering one of
the world's most successful and comprehensive slum reduction and
improvement program(s)” (UN Habitat, 2010). Despite UN Habitat's
praise of VSB, the program failed to meet the declared goal of rendering
Morocco slum-free by 2012, and continues to face significant obstacles,
resistance, and limitations in its ability to produce slum-free cities. The
Moroccan Minister of Housing, Nabil Benabdellah admitted in a 2014
interview with La Vie Eco, “We are currently facing serious resistance,
that we are no longer able to deal with the volume of slum households
that is created each year, or 10,000 cases per year” (Harmak, 2014). In
2017, when asked about the significant delays in the achievement of
VSB's stated goals, he reiterated in an interview with the same jour-
nalist, “We are now at the bottom of the basket in the treatment of the
housing deficit, which is why we are facing increasingly complex si-
tuations… This is particularly the case in slums where we see the in-
stallation of new households and the formation of pockets of resistance
extremely difficult to treat” (Harmak, 2017).
This paper analyzes the “pockets of resistance” that the Kingdom of
Morocco has faced in the implementation of the VSB program. I assert
that the contestations and acts of resistance pursued by slum-dwellers
are an art of presence – “the ability of the subaltern subjects to assert
their collective will in spite of all odds, to circumvent the constraints,
utilizing what is possible, and discover new spaces within which to
make themselves heard, seen, felt and realized” (Bayat, 2017:111). The
art of presence is “the fundamental movement in the life of nonmove-
ments,” therefore I argue that slum-dwellers responded to the VSB in
incremental/spontaneous and organized/strategic ways, and in doing
so they forced the authorities to change their approach against all odds.
Using two case studies, I demonstrate how slum dwellers' courageous
and creative responses to the initial rehousing scheme delayed the VSB
process by a number of years, and in fact made the authorities offer a
resettlement option (recasement) that was preferable to the residents. As
slum dwellers resisted the intervention of the state through tactics of
refusal, protest, and grassroots organizing, they turned urban space into
a site of contention, and made claims to that space despite being “dis-
persed, unorganized and atomized” (Bayat, 2017:106). As James C.
Scott reminds us, “human resistance to the more severe forms of social
straightjacketing prevents monotonic schemes of centralized rationality
from ever being realized.” (Scott, 1998:348). The social ‘nonmovement’
of the slum-dwellers brought them tangible benefits, and led to the
“socialization of the state” through the replacement of the government
sponsored rehousing program with a resettlement scheme that they
preferred. They therein resisted the state's attempt to decrease their
2
In Morocco, governing is encapsulated in the concept of the makzen, which
represents all forms of state or government. The concept, which predates the
protectorate period signifies the power of the central state apparatus and the
lack of differentiation between different scales of government. Since VSB was
launched under royal decree by King Mohammed VI, the mandates flow from
the central government via the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning and
trickle down to all other scales of government. While local government is im-
plicated in its implementation, governing is a top-down affair with little agency
at the local scale. Therefore, when I refer to “the state” or “government” in this
paper, I am referring to the makzen.
3
Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
visibility, eradicate their built environment and inculcate them into
proper neoliberal development subjects. Their resistance was not a form
of radical, insurgent citizenship, but rather a form of “deradicalized
dissent” that amended the existing order instead of producing a new
one. Despite a repressive context, the art of presence initiated by the
slum-dwellers induced a dramatic change in housing policy in their
favor.
The main reason resettlement became part of VSB was because of
slum dweller demand, demonstrating what Bayat calls the “socializa-
tion of the state.” Here the government was forced to offer another
option to slum residents. According to most of the residents I spoke
with, this was much preferred over apartment dwelling. The resettle-
ment scheme requires that plots of land be available and therefore is
easier to implement in cities with an excess of land outside of the city. It
is much more difficult to implement in the crowded conditions of
Casablanca and Rabat. Within these two cities, I looked at two con-
tentious cases that had dragged on for years despite the state's inter-
ventions. While in both cases residents were eventually forced to move,
the conditions of their move, the process that led to the resettlement
agreement, and the ability to negotiate relocation on-site, mark these
cases as exceptional. Given my interest in understanding the underbelly
of the VSB program not celebrated in the literature, I sought case stu-
dies where the negotiations between slum residents and the state were
prolonged. Under neoliberal urbanism, slum relocation, gentrification,
displacement etc., are seen as an inevitable part of broader urban
processes. Instead of reifying neoliberal urbanism, I seek to expose the
quotidian forms of ‘nonmovements’ that make these processes con-
tentious, messy, and full of surprises.
2. Methodology and case study sites
Between April 2015 and January 2016, over 50 semi-structured
interviews were conducted in collaboration with a local researcher who
was a graduate student at the INAU (National Institute for Urban
Planning) in Rabat. All interviews were semi-structured and unrecorded
but detailed notes were made and transcribed upon completion of the
interviews. Interviews ranged in structure and length but most were
approximately 1 h. The information is presented anonymously to pro-
tect the identities of all parties interviewed. Official interviews are
stated as such, while interviews with slum residents are identified in the
text by their location (al-Kora or Zenata).
Seventeen interviews were conducted with various government
actors involved in the administration of the VSB project at the national,
regional and local scale, including with the representatives at the
Ministries of Interior, Finance and Housing/Urban Planning. At the
regional and local scale, we interviewed representatives from the gov-
ernor's office of the prefecture, the urban agency, al-Omrane develop-
ment agency, Dyar Mansour development agency, the office of tech-
nical studies and the L'ADS (Agency for Social Development), to gather
government data on the VSB initiative and details of the initiative in the
selected cases. Interviews with these stakeholders were conducted in
the interviewees' offices. We also conducted 37 interviews with com-
munity advocacy organizations and slum dwellers to shed light on how
they respond to the VSB program. Interviews with residents were
conducted either within the settlement or in a nearby café. Contacts
were made using snowball sampling, which of course comes with some
selection bias. However, the variety of interviews conducted with var-
ious stakeholders minimizes the likelihood of misrepresentation within
the sample. Interviews were conducted in Arabic or French. Notes were
transcribed in French and then translated to English by the author. Data
was coded and annotated for logical themes using an abductive and
iterative approach.
I employ a case-study approach of two slum settlements within the
bustling metropolitan cities of Rabat and Casablanca. Within the capital
of Rabat lies Douar al-Kora, a nearly waterfront settlement in the
Yacoub Mansour neighborhood of the city. Inside greater Casablanca
M. Atia
Fig. 4. Case study sites within the Moroccan cities of Rabat and Casablanca.
lies the commune (or municipality)3 of Ain Harrouda, known for
hosting the site of Morocco's premier “green city” Zenata4 (see Fig. 4).
The first case study, Douar al-Kora (herein referred to as al-Kora), is
the oldest, largest and densest slum in Rabat. Established in 1942 and
with a strategic location on the seashore, the slum is part of a larger
neighborhood known as Yacoub Mansour. Initially, the slum was on the
outskirts of the city, but as Rabat grew, it quickly became part of the
city's limits. In 2004, the area had over 10,000 residents. Starting in
1986, there were a number of propositions to relocate the residents of
al-Kora, however, all attempts failed. Starting from 2002, the King in-
itiated a partnership with the Dyar Mansour Corporation, a subsidy of
the state-owned Caisse de dépot et de gestion (French for Deposit and
Management Fund, referred to as CDG), to relocate the slum in three
phrases, with a commercial center at the heart. Developers were keen to
access valuable seafront property and build market-rate buildings on
the waterfront, while relocating residents further away from the site.
The slum residents' resistance, however, created several obstacles to
these plans.
The second case is Zenata, a new planned green city between Morocco's
largest city, Casablanca, and the nearby seaside, largely urban municipality
of Mohammedia. Mohammedia is part of the newer Metropolitan area
known as Greater Casablanca. Zenata is an attempt to rebalance the
3
Morocco is a Kingdom with numerous scales of government and layers of
administrative division. The country is divided into 12 regions, which consist of
75 provinces/prefectures, which are divided further into communes/munici-
palities.
4
Zenata, a mixed-use sustainable city and one of the flagship projects of the
Kingdom's national sustainable development strategy known as the Green Plan.
Zenata is funded through The European Investment Bank and the French
Development Agency (AFD) and will be implemented with an environmental
impact assessment and include energy efficiency requirements.
4
Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
disequilibrium between the two sides of greater Casablanca, which is split
by the service sector in the east and industry in the west (the side closer to
Mohammedia). Zenata is located within the commune of Ain Harrouda, an
area well known in Morocco for its quantity of slums. Approximately 74%
of the population of Ain Harrouda lives in slums, but they are spread across
the territory rather than concentrated in one location (author interview,
urbanism service in Ain Harrouda, July 15, 2015). SAZ, the subsidiary of
CDG responsible for developing Zenata, claims that there are over 7000
slum-dwelling households in Zenata that need relocation (author interview,
SAZ, June 18, 2015). They sought to consolidate the slum dwellers into a
single location near the industrial part of the territory in order to free up
more valuable land on the seafront for profitable touristic development.
SAZ built 2500 apartments for the slum dwellers, however once again, the
targeted population refused relocation to the apartments; only 300 house-
holds accepted relocation to the allocated apartments. Given the resistance
to the relocation scheme, SAZ attempted to broker a resettlement agreement
with the slum dwellers which provided plots of land outside Zenata.
However, the slum dwellers rejected this proposal and requested resettle-
ment in the same location, which forced SAZ to revise their resettlement
plans. Given these contestations, the slum residents were offered parcels of
land for resettlement within the territory of Zenata. This is largely seen as a
victory for slum residents, whose persistent contestations won them a seat at
the bargaining table.
3. Theoretical framework
Numerous scholars have critiqued the “return of the slum” (Gilbert,
2007) as a central component of researchers' agendas. Given the sin quo non
status attributed to slums, debates have surfaced about how to productively
engage with slums (Roy, 2011), whether as a call for visiting the “slum as
theory” (Rao, 2006) or more recent calls to build “an ontology of slum
practices” (Arabindoo, 2011). The account of slum dweller contestations
M. Atia
discussed in this paper aims to “provide valuable insights into linkages
between the coarser grain of macro-structural processes and the finer tex-
ture of human experience” (Arabindoo, 2011: 644). I am inspired by Hol-
ston's call to “recognize ‘slums’ as places in which residents use their in-
genuity to create a daily world of adaptations, connections, and strategies
with which to inhabit modern metropolises on better terms than those
imposed by the powerful local and international forces that would have
them segregated and servile” (Holston, 2009: 249). However, I exercise
caution in reading these incremental everyday practices of survival as a new
form of urban citizenship.
Displacement, whether through gentrification (Brenner, Peck, &
Theodore, 2010; Lees, 2012; Newman & Wyly, 2006; Rodríguez & Di
Virgilio, 2016), slum relocation (Berner & Korff, 1995; Bhan, 2009) or other
forms of urban regeneration (Mahmud, 2010; Paller, 2012), is widely dis-
cussed in the literature on neoliberal urbanism as an inevitable aspect of
contemporary urban transformation (Atkinson & Bridge, 2005; Davidson,
2009; Gonick, 2015). Zemni and Bogaert (2011) describe the Moroccan VSB
program as part of a global politics of neoliberal governmentality, and in his
extensive work on the topic, Bogaert highlights the withdrawal of the state
and the expropriation of waterfront property for lucrative redevelopment
(Bogaert, 2013, 2011). However, the neoliberal governmentality regime
governing slums is partial, unable to realize its stated purpose, and wrought
with tensions, as slum residents make claims and engage in micro-politics
around the intervention. Despite the omnipresence of neoliberal urbanism,
there is a rich literature that highlights the “spaces of poverty and forms of
popular agency that often remain invisible and neglected” in urban theory
(Roy, 2011: 224). Subaltern urbanism calls for an understanding of the
everyday spatial practices of the subaltern as forms of agency (Ballard,
2015; Benjamin, 2008; Gidwani, 2006; McFarlane, 2012).
Holston argues that the struggle for rights to a daily life of dignity in the
city is a new formulation of citizenship, one that is conceived of in re-
sidential life (Holston, 2008:313). Comparing the changing housing rights
regimes in Shanghai and Mumbai, Weinstein and Ren (2009) find that the
political contestations in Mumbai led to the construction of a more pro-
tective regime that turned slum residents into more active urban citizens
who articulated their rights to housing and made new claims in the city. In
some cases, processes of exclusion resulting from slum redevelopment
schemes, lead slum residents to articulate their resistance using a discourse
of justice and human rights (Imas & Weston, 2011). However, in Morocco,
as in Manila and Bankok, the discourse of rights has a limited role because
the military is able to use force or the threat of force to obstruct resistance
movements and deter slum activism (Berner & Korff, 1995). The agency of
the subaltern is the subject of numerous works, whether conceptualized as
“insurgent citizenship” (Holston, 2008), the “right to the city,”
(Huchzermeyer, 2011; Weinstein & Ren, 2009) “political society,”
(Chatterjee, 2004) or other forms of social movements (Hooper & Ortolano,
2012; Mahmud, 2010; Paller, 2012).
While the aforementioned theorizations can be relevant to the VSB case,
context is absolutely critical to understanding the ways in which subaltern
subjects respond to neoliberal urbanity. Holston's insurgent citizenship, for
example, is quite useful for thinking about how democratization processes
enable subaltern subjects to see themselves as rights bearing and to make
claims as citizens. However, in the context of authoritarianism and failed
revolutions that are hallmarks of the current political climate in the Middle
East and North Africa, the language of empowered citizenship and demo-
cratization seems not quite fitting. In the Moroccan case, despite its pre-
sence in the constitution, the language of rights has limited salience for
housing advocacy and the discursive framing of democratization and jus-
tice, would have likely alienated the state and led to the use of force over
negotiation.5 Rather than use the concept of insurgent citizenship to analyze
5
Article 31 of the 2011 Moroccan Constitution states that citizens have the
right to decent housing, but there is no specific definition given and it is of
limited utility as a discursive frame. See page 15, http://www.sgg.gov.ma/
Portals/0/constitution/constitution_2011_Fr.pdf.
5
Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
the Moroccan case, I turn to Asef Bayat's concept of nonmovements and art
of presence to recognize the important gains made by slum-dweller orga-
nizing without overstating or romanticizing them. Bayat's theoretical fra-
meworks are developed from his analysis of street life in the Middle East,
mainly Cairo and Tehran and the concepts resonate particularly strongly
when studying subaltern agency and everyday spaces in the context of
authoritarianism.
Nonmovements are the “collective actions of noncollective actors,”
or “the shared contentious practices of a larger number of fragmented
people whose similar but disconnected claims produce important social
change in their own lives, and society at large, even though such
practices are rarely guided by an ideology, recognizable leadership or
organization” (Bayat, 2017:106). I differentiate between two types of
nonmovements: the spontaneous/sporadic contestations of slum re-
sidents and the more systematic and organized methods of resistance. I
assert that the social nonmovements discussed in the paper represent
the “socialization of the state” (Bayat, 2010:251) and that in the Mor-
occan context this constitutes an art of presence. I highlight the fissures
and ruptures in the VSB program and therein the broader top-down
neoliberal security state, and in doing so, I recognize the structure
(neoliberal urbanism) and the agency of the subaltern (subaltern ur-
banism) without romanticizing or overstating either. The following
section outlines the various spontaneous and sporadic contestations of
slum residents, while the subsequent one narrates the forms of orga-
nized resistance to the relocation. I emphasize how, contestation and
resistance created a pressure valve on the state and eventually led to a
change in policy towards resettlement, a policy largely seen as prefer-
able to the slum residents.
4. Negotiating resettlement: Spontaneous and sporadic
contestations to VSB
In both case studies, the residents largely rejected the rehousing
schemes. First and foremost, they took issue with the census and elig-
ibility criteria. Next, the residents did not want to be relocated to an-
other neighborhood, they wanted to remain on site. In both case stu-
dies, the populations successfully lobbied to have their rehousing occur
on site, despite having to give up access to the beachfront. In addition,
the slum residents took issue with the apartments. The cost of the
apartments was prohibitive to them and many refused to take on the
debt necessary to receive apartments in the new communities. The
apartments also did not consider the lifestyle of the residents, who
preferred to remain in low-rise buildings and were not accustomed to
apartment dwelling. They had concerns about the quality of the
apartments, their location and the limitations on resale. Finally, the
residents felt wholly excluded from the redevelopment process. The
residents felt that the program was top-down, that they were consulted
too late in the decision-making process and that they were not included
in the plans but rather seen as an obstacle. They did not feel prepared
for the relocation and found the conditions unacceptable. They knew
that the developers were benefiting from state subsidies and tax bene-
fits and felt this was done at their expense.
4.1. Contesting the census
The most contentious issue with the relocation scheme was the
census and eligibility criteria. The project accounted for the number of
units required based on the number of individual barracks, and did not
account for the fact that slum residents tend to live with extended fa-
mily members/multiple households under one roof. Thus, when re-
location was proposed, residents refused to relocate to a single apart-
ment, instead requesting one apartment per nuclear family unit. This
caused a crisis in the project because the slum residents both contested
the criteria used to determine eligibility and there was not enough
space to accommodate the exponential growth in the number of units
needed. The long period between when the rehousing was announced
M. Atia
and when the building began meant that the number of households who
felt they should be included multiplied quickly; as youth married and
procreated this only compounded the problem. The residents took issue
with the difference between their perceived rights and the procedures:
“The first phase was met with a lot of problems, namely at the
census level of the rights of holders, because there are residents who
have not been counted, which is contradictory to the royal procla-
mation which insists that every slum dwelling family has the right to
housing. But the people who run the program don't respect the views
of the King”.
(author interview, al-Kora, August 16, 2015)
Slum enumeration is a critical calculative practice for making slums
intelligible for intervention (Ghertner, 2010:186). Through the im-
plementation of its calculative practices, the state encounters “various
technical difficulties and political challenges” that in turn “provoke a
political response” (Ghertner, 2010:187).
The issue of the slum census and the criteria for inclusion frequently
came up as the most significant issue motivating the slum dwellers
refusals, “After the company summoned the inhabitants via the au-
thorities, in order to receive their apartments, many families found they
were not included in the list of recipients and made their claims to SAZ
(the developer)” (author interview, Zenata, August 10, 2015). While
complaints to the local authorities were very common, and I often
witnessed them directly while waiting for interviews, some residents
escalated the matter to other judicial entities, usually to no avail. One
resident described an escalation, “My neighbor has filed a complaint at
the provincial level and also at the tribunal level and he has not re-
ceived receipt of his complaint” (author interview, Zenata, August 10,
2015).
4.2. Resistance to financialization
VSB asks slum residents to participate in the debt apparatus, expend
significant personal financial resources, and bear risk. One of the big-
gest concerns for residents is the financial burden placed upon them by
the relocation scheme, “The reason why we reject the program in the
first place is because the apartments are expensive – more than 100,000
dirham – and narrow and we can't afford to go into debt” (author in-
terview, Zenata, October 10, 2015). Slum-dwellers financial exclusion
is largely based on their precarious work conditions and yet they are
asked to accumulate personal debt in the name of bettering themselves
and the nation (Schwittay, 2011.) Financial concerns were the most
common explanation for resident refusal, followed by a relative's unmet
claims, “We refused to move to the new settlement because we could
not afford to pay 100,000 MAD. I prefer a lot of land because I can
gradually build my house. The families that have accepted the apart-
ments, perhaps they have the means to pay but I do not” (author in-
terview, Zenata, August 10, 2015). One resident recounted the credit
burden placed on those who accept the apartments,
“You are required to start a line of credit to pay for the apartment
and every month you must pay towards the loan. The majority of
families cannot afford the credit. I lost my job and I can't afford to
pay the rent because I'm not working. The plots are a solution be-
cause they are less expensive and we can arrange to have a third
party build the house”.
(author interview, Zenata, August 13, 2015)
Another resident explained the financial situation of many of his
neighbors, and suggested that the state should introduce other forms of
intervention, “Slum dwellers don't have regular stable incomes, and
cannot pay the monthly mortgages… the solution is to provide job
opportunities for slum residents so that they can have regular incomes”
(author interview, al-Kora, August 4, 2015). Through predatory fi-
nancial practices like micro-credit, the integration of the poor into a
system of “poverty capital,” as Roy adeptly calls it, turns the poor into
6
Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
privatized individuals responsible for their own well-being, and further
facilitate(s) their exploitation by financiers in the name of connecting
them to capital (Roy, 2010). Through this system, the poor become
linked to global finance capital, as both the beneficiaries of pro-poor
businesses and as new emerging markets for profiteering (Jones, 2012).
4.3. Refusing relocation
Nonmovements are the “shared contentious practices of a large
number of people whose similar but disconnected claims produce im-
portant social change in their own lives, and society at large” (Bayat,
2017:106). The most common response to the VSB program was simply
refusing to relocate. Residents frequently refused to relocate as an act of
solidarity with family members who were deemed ineligible for the
scheme, “There are families who refuse to leave the slum because either
they were not counted in the census survey or their recently married
children were not counted” (author interview, al-Kora, August 16,
2015). Another resident explained that he himself had refused to move
because the allocations were unfair to other members of his family, “I
was offered three vouchers [for apartments], but I refused them because
my sons did not receive apartments” (author interview, Zenata, August
13, 2015). Despite the threat of and occasional use of force by the
authorities, a few cases were particularly persistent in their protest,
“Our neighbors refused to move. The court issued that they must move
so they [the authorities] used force to remove them from their barrack.
She was pregnant and she lost her baby in the process. Another son
threatened to commit suicide with gas, there were lots of families that
refused” (author interview, al-Kora, August 4, 2015). Bayat posits that
the “political constrain under authoritarian rule compels the urban
disenfranchised” to resort to nonmovements which in turn become
“collective actions of noncollective actors” (Bayat, 2017:110).
Some claimed that the only residents who moved to the new
apartments were those who were coerced or provided with incorrect
information, “of those who agreed to move to the new housing, it was
because the representatives pushed them to do so and circulated false
information in order to convince people to accept the proposal” (author
interview, Zenata, August 13, 2015). Residents in the settlements fre-
quently communicated with each other and collectively refused to re-
locate because of dissatisfaction with the new units, “While almost 300
families accepted the rehousing, they regretted it and advised others
not to accept the apartments because they are suffering in these new
units” (author interview, Zenata, August 13, 2015). Bayat asserts that
nonmovements likes these are established through a “tacit recognition
of their commonalities” and that “people forge collective identities and
extend their solidarities beyond their immediate familiar circles to in-
clude, the unknown, the stranger” (Bayat, 2017:104).
In Zenata, a sense of exclusion from the new city's plans and feelings
of being discarded and not unvalued by stakeholders pushed families to
refuse the apartments,
“The idea behind the green city Zenata is a good idea, an important
project but with respect to those who are from this area, it is a big
problem. They encourage outside investors to come and invest in the
area but as the original residents, we don't benefit at all from the
project, they just want to relocate us, displace us and throw us into
these tiny apartments. This is why we refused the apartments”.
(author interview, Zenata, August 5, 2015)
Refusal was often used as a last resort, a response to the top-down
nature of the program, “They are able to tell people you must leave,
without any discussion because this is the King's Initiative, and they
refuse to communicate with civil society or to meet the needs of the
residents. For this reason, the residents had to begin to refuse the
project” (author interview, Zenata, August 5, 2015).
When confronted by the state's rehousing program, many slum
dwellers were dissatisfied by the quality and location of the apartments
offered and refused to relocate. Some refused to relocate in solidarity
M. Atia
Fig. 5. Reasons given by slum-residents for refusing to move, data collected by author in Al-Kora, March 2016.
with family members who were not allocated apartments. Many con-
tinued to make claims for them or their family members, crafting letters
of protest, meeting with local authorities and contesting the census that
was produced of the area. Others questioned the financial burden that
the apartments would create for them and stated they did not have the
means to participate (see Fig. 5). A final issue related to vacant slum
dwellings. The project could not abolish the vacant slums because the
owners could return to their property and request compensation ac-
cording to Moroccan law. The slum could not be abolished and the city
declared slum-free until all the residents had been relocated.
5. Negotiating resettlement II: Organized slum dweller resistance
to VSB
The previous section outlined the ways in which slum dwellers re-
fused to relocate and take out loans to participate in VSB. Sometimes
these contestations turned into more organized forms of resistance. This
section recounts how slum residents protested collectively over a sus-
tained period of time and in other cases organized formally and created
civil society organizations.
5.1. Protest
Protest was a frequent response to the forceful removal of families
from the slum, “After, the problems started… the authorities (by way of
the police and the army) intervened with force to displace them, but the
residents protested against this operation… they did many demon-
strations until the company (the developer) agreed to meet their de-
mands” (author interview, al-Kora, August 16, 2015). Another resident
recapped a similar occurrence in Zenata, “Initially, the authorities
forced the resident to move and this led to protests in two of the set-
tlements” (author interview, Zenata, August 13, 2015).
7
Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
Frustration with the census procedure, frequently led residents to
protest, “The latest protest was last Sunday, so that all the slum
dwellers could benefit from the project because there are many families
who are uncounted, mainly the newlyweds” (author interview, Zenata,
December 2, 2015). Despite the state's violent response to protest ac-
tivity, they continued, “People protested many times so that all of the
slum dwelling families can benefit from the project, and many people
have been arrested and imprisoned” (author interview, al-Kora, August
16, 2015). The protests continued in an organized way, as one resident
recalled, “Each Sunday nearly 15 protests were conducted in front of
the commune and others in the province of Mohammadia and on the
first of May (Labor Day) they did it in Rabat carrying posters and
chanting equity slogans” (author interview, Zenata, October 10, 2015).
Often times the protest was in response to the lack of involvement of the
residents in their relocation, “people protested again and again to de-
mand their (constitutional) right to suitable housing. In 2010 Dyar Al
Mansour started to construct buildings without any communication
with civil society organizations” (author interview, Zenata, December
2, 2015). A variety of actors participated in the protest and the ability
to represent them through organizations helped create a unified voice,
“We began to protest in 2013, until 2015 March. We had 40 protests in
this period. There were many demands also from the other stake-
holders, property owners, industry owners etc. in the area who were
protesting the plans for Zenata” (author interview, Zenata, August 6,
2015).
When the protests did not lead to a response, they sometime took
more extreme measures, like blocking the roads, one organizer re-
counted,
“Civil society organized protests every Sunday at the beginning, but
the authorities did not listen and there was no result. Then we
thought to cut off the roads, to create a protest, but the authorities
M. Atia Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

took photos and targeted protestors and imprisoned them. We impact, the largest being systematic delays to the redevelopment of the
continued to protest this treatment and in 2015 they were released. slum. One organized recounted the success,
In March 2015, we started to protest again but on Mondays and
“Before we were organized, there was no consideration of the needs
Tuesday and it was in response to these consistent protest that the
of the community. But since we were able to organize, they started
local authorities said ok, go home, we will make sure you benefit
to lose time, the companies started to pay attention to our demands
from the plots in the next round”.
and now we have a say and our demands are starting to be met. The
(author interview, Zenata, August 5, 2015)
relationship, the treatment of the companies from 2013 onwards
Systematic protest created ties between different types of affected re- towards the association has improved”.
sidents, and led to formal organizing, the creation of civil society or- (author interview, Zenata, August 6, 2015)
ganizations and eventually the creation of a federation of NGOs.
According to the leader of the NGO federation in Zenata, they compiled
a list of collective demands that all residents, including newlyweds,
5.2. Formal organizing and civil society organizations
divorcees, widows, and workers would benefit from plots of land; that
necessary services would be included in the redevelopment; existing
Participating in protest also formed a basis for organizing and
businesses would receive a symbolic reimbursement for their reloca-
making collective claims, “Only after the housing construction project
tion, and most importantly, that the associations would have a stake in
began, did the local authorities explain the plans for relocation… The
the decision-making process for the resettlement as well as the entire
developer forced the families to leave the settlement, but the in-
new green city. As a result of the organizing, the associations were able
habitants refused and created associations” (author interview, Zenata,
to force a negotiation between the developers and the residents, “Today
August 10, 2015). The organizing enabled them to have a seat at the
the company has set a period of two years for the slum dwellers to
negotiation table, “the people have created two associations to protect
receive plots and now there's a discussion between the civil society, the
and mobilize the people, to be the spokesmen of the residents with local
local authorities and the SAZ about the supplemental list and the un-
authorities and the company” (author interview, Zenata, December 2,
counted cases” (author interview, Zenata, October 10, 2015). While it is
2015). Slum dwellers gained a voice in the process through a combi-
uncertain precisely which demands the state and developers will be
nation of protest and organizing, “since we were able to organize, they
held to and how, community organizing and the formation of collective
started to lose time, the companies started to pay attention to our de-
demands worked to delay the construction plans for Zenata and dis-
mands and now we have a say and our demands are starting to be met”
rupted the developers' plans in both case studies. Regardless of whether
(author interview, Zenata, May 8, 2015).
they created community advocacy associations, protested, resisted or
A combination of protest and organizing was a tactic used by small
defaulted on their loans, the slum residents were actively engaging with
business owners in the slums, who were concerned about losing their
the state's policies and succeeded in disrupting the Kingdom's plans.
livelihoods,
“One day in 2005, the police came early morning and started to 6. Conclusion
destroy the market and the merchandise with them and demolished
all of the barracks. At this time, merchants forced an association to The state approaches the VSB problem as a security question, one
prevent the authorities from demolishing their stores. The orga- that treats the slum and its residents as the problem. In addition, the
nized, filed complaints and sent letters to the prime minister and the state is content to let private developers pursue their profits at the cost
council for human rights, but have not had any response”. of the residents, resulting in unacceptable housing alternatives. VSB
(author interview, al-Kora, December 4, 2015) faced resistance from slum residents because the authorities pursued a
top-down approach; one that ignored the root causes of the urban
Organizing was a way for the residents to demand inclusion in the plan
housing problem and failed to address the underlying needs of the
and to have a say in their relocation. As the number of small associa-
population. Despite widespread repression, the slum residents actively
tions proliferated, they saw a need to coordinate their claims, “Over
responded to their subjugation, in organized and spontaneous ways,
time, fourteen NGOs were created to protest the relocation” (author
and disrupted the Kingdom's plans to relocate, domesticate and fi-
interview, Zenata, August 6, 2015). The organizing and coordination
nancialize them. These everyday practices demonstrate the limits of
emerged in response to the lack of inclusion of civil society from the
and fissures in the Kingdom's neoliberal security state. Examining
outset. As a result of their exclusion, “the residents had to begin re-
subaltern urbanisms serves to re-politicize the experiences of the urban
fusing the project. We created a network of associations, to defend the
poor and provincialize neoliberal narratives of urbanization in the
rights of the slum residents” (author interview, Zenata, May 8, 2015).
Global South (Arabindoo, 2011; Parnell & Robinson, 2012).
The creation of a federation helped them reach more visibility,
In response to the variegated refusals of the slum dwellers to re-
“An association was created for housing in 2007 after the King's housing, the Moroccan state adapted the VSB rehousing initiative to
inauguration of the project. And in 2011 after the construction of one of resettlement. Although not an original part of the program, re-
the apartments for the relocation of the slum dwellers, a federation settlement (recasement) was the most successful aspect. This represents
was created of all the associations within Ain Harrouda. The protests what Bayat calls the “socialization of the state,” or governmentality in
started in front of the commune to demand the benefits of the plots reverse, as the residents were able to urge the state to adapt to the
of land and after that the local authorities and the SAZ organized demands of society (Bayat, 2010:251). The slum residents had to move
meetings with 4 representatives of the federation”. out of their homes but they did so on terms that were preferable to them
(author interview, Zenata, October 10, 2015) – given the context, this is an “art of presence.” The odds were against
them, they had little leverage in the face of the initiative, and yet they
Organizing was a way for the slum residents to make collective and
were able to change government policy.
coordinated claims, block the developers plans and negotiate for in-
The growth of slums and informal settlements are not simply an
clusion in the program. If all households were not removed, construc-
“urban” problem. The root of the problem stems from rural to urban
tion could not begin, “We created a network of associations, to defend
migration and the unequal distribution of wealth and resources in the
the rights of the slum residents. They began the discussion for the re-
country that leads so many people to the cities in search of a livelihood.
location in one area and some households accepted to move and others
Long-term solution must include improving the livelihood strategies of
refused. So till now, they were not able to demolish the slum” (author
both urban and rural communities, so as to stem the in-flow of residents
interview, Zenata, August 5, 2015). The organizing eventually had an
to the slums. A social justice-oriented approach would not seek to limit

8
M. Atia
Fig. 6. After negotiations with most residents, the authorities cleared the al-
Kora slum and constructed the apartments for rehousing. December 2016,
photo by the author.
slum resident visibility and instead would recoginze their contribution
to urban life, ask slum residents to come up with solutions they found
amenable and to participate in their implementation on-site.
In al-Kora, while the third phase of the project was scheduled to
conclude in 2008, it remained problematic until the end of 2016, when
the makhzen bulldozed the few remaining homes and forced the re-
development of the waterfront land (see Fig. 6). In Zenata, the slum
dwellers significantly delayed the plans for the new green city and
successfully secured their right to housing within the parameters of the
new city. They also negotiated for essential social services and for plots
of land that they can build themselves as opposed to the pre-made
apartments in al-Kora. While the developer was hoping to make the
slum-residents invisible and remove them entirely from the pristine
new green city's boundaries, the residents remain on the grounds and
are now part of the European Union's marketing materials, as evidence
of the city's sustainable social development. The state and the devel-
opers have had to make concessions to the slum populations; offering
plots to those who refused to move initially and creating space for them
in the new city. Business owners are also being compensated. While the
residents did eventually have to leave their homes, their contestations
led to concessions and delays and the community by and large will
remain within the territory of Zenata.
It is tempting to read the slum-dwellers response as “participating in
collective organizing with a view to challenging their structural mar-
ginalization and defending their access to urban space” and therefore as
a form of insurgent citizenship or alternative urban future (Gillespie,
2017:983). However, I believe that we must exercise caution in our
optimistic reading of these incremental practices. Rather, we should
account for these nonmovements as a form of “deradicalized dissent”
that works to amend the existing social order rather than create a new
one (Bayat, 2017). The slum dwellers are focused on “a strategy to
outmaneuver the adversaries” and tangible outcomes (Bayat,
2017:111), not a new social order. Nonmovements “represent the col-
lective action of noncollective actors, who are oriented more toward
action than by being ideologically driven, concerned more with practice
than protest” (Bayat, 2017:110). Yes, the contestations and resistances
collectively can and did change the reality on the ground and socialize
the state – they forced the authorities to come to terms with slum-
dwellers desires, nearly abandoning rehousing schemes and instead
implementing a resettlement option that the slum residents much pre-
ferred. However, the slum-dwellers nonmovements did not connect up
with a larger social movement nor did it allow slum residents to keep
their homes. Instead their ability to “circumvent the constraints,
9
Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
utilizing what is possible” represents an art of presence and an opening
within an oppressive regime (Bayat, 2017:111). Despite the odds, the
subaltern's assertion of their collective will to “socialized the state” led
to a more favorable outcomes for the subaltern.
While it is important to understand VSB in its local context, it is a
project that aligns with the current global campaign for “slum-free”
cities and therefore has significant lessons for those interested in re-
thinking the spatialization of urban poverty (Arabindoo, 2011; Roy,
2013). VSB's goal to provide 100,000 affordable housing units each
year to the residents of slum areas, was part of the Moroccan govern-
ment's contribution to goal 7D of the Millennium Development
Goals—to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100
million slum dwellers by 2015. The effort is now part of Target 11 of the
new Sustainable Development Goals—to ensure access for all to ade-
quate, safe and affordable housing and basic services, including up-
grading slums by 2030 (Huchzermeyer, 2011). The slum dwellers'
courage, their creativity, and their practicality produced a globally
recognized slum program that turned slum residents into homeowners.
While this might indeed be part of what Roy (2010) calls “bottom bil-
lion capitalism,” the ability of the slum residents to resist their fi-
nancialization and yet force the state to grant them tangible benefits is
remarkable. It is precisely this kind of financial inclusion that many of
the urban poor residing in megacities seek. In light of this, if there is
anything to be celebrated about the VSB program, it is not its ability to
produce slum-free cities, but rather, its ability to turn slum residents
into property owners. Perhaps one day, when nonmovements become
movements, and home ownership is accompanied by rights, we will be
able to celebrate slum activism as a form of insurgent citizenship.
Funding acknowledgement
The research was completed in collaboration with Said Samlali and
with the financial support of the Arab Council of Social Sciences.
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Mona Atia is Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs at the George
Washington University. She is a critical development geographer whose areas of expertise
include poverty, philanthropy, human development and the spatial politics of margin-
alization. She is author of Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic
Charity in Egypt (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). She currently holds an NSF
CAREER award for a project that examines the production, use and impact of poverty
mapping in Morocco and France. She is also engaged in a project on the Moroccan “City
Without Slums” Program, funded by the Arab Council of Social Sciences.