With this article we contribute to debates on urban land governance and sustainable urban development in Africa by providing an empirical analysis of forced displacement and resettlement associated with infrastructure development in Beira city, Mozambique. In recent years Beira has become the recipient of numerous investment flows targeting the built environment by a range of international investors. By analyzing the micropolitical engagements associated with three different infrastructure projects, based on extensive qualitative interviews, observations, and document analysis, we demonstrate how each intervention has been associated with highly informal and divergent processes of forced displacement and resettlement. We argue that these land related impacts have been annexed from debates on sustainable infrastructure development, and that they exhibit some fundamental differences from established resettlement research. We conclude by arguing that forced displacement and resettlement should be understood as a deliberate and systematic feature of urban infrastructure development, through which new social-spatial arrangements are created. This ultimately points to the emergence of a novel mode of fragmented urbanism within the context of urban development in Africa which poses new challenges to urban sustainability.

This paper presents the results of a short-term research project conducted in 2017/2018 on the various ways in which migration and land dynamics in West Africa are intertwined. Contrary to much conventional (policy) thinking in the European Union (EU) today, our point of departure is not that migration is the problem to be solved – nor that (access to) land is the straightforward means to discouraging migration. Drawing on local case studies in four West African countries, this research aims to shed light on the various relationships between migration and land, and to analyze to what extent they may contribute to or obstruct (local) inclusive and sustainable development in Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Benin. In doing so, we aim to offer food for thought concerning possible ways for making the connection between migration and land more fruitful and productive for as many people as possible, especially in relation to the opportunities and constraints facing different categories of West African youth.

In this paper, the Residence Prealpino, a building declared uninhabitable but which houses some 300 Senegalese migrants in an otherwise well-to-do neighbourhood in the town of Brescia, Italy, is taken as a case of how migrants’ lives are influenced both by the local context in which they make a living and by the transnational linkages they maintain with their homelands. Studies of integration normally focus on how migrants adapt to the situation in the country of arrival and often do not see that arriving in a new country does not mean leaving the old behind. Although transnational studies take this into account they have tended to neglect the influence of local circumstances and display a rather optimistic picture of transnational migrants’ lives. This positive interpretation of transnationalism is especially evident in the case of the Mourides, the Muslim brotherhood to which the majority of the Senegalese in Brescia belong. They are often heralded as African winners, conquering the world. While this may be true in some respects, it is only part of the picture. The case of Residence Prealpino shows how making a livelihood at the margins of a European society is often difficult but also indicates how Mouride local and transnational links help people cope with this situation. It thus contributes to a more nuanced view of the Mouride brotherhood and what it is to be a Mouride migrant in the current era.

In the current era of neoliberalism, there is not only an expansion of Western influence in many parts of Africa, but also increased influence from the Arab wor...