Evict or invest: community distinction and variations of urban informality governance in Jakarta’s democratic setting

Why do some informal neighborhoods get evicted, and others get improved? This paper explores the reasons behind the patterned variation and uneven governmental responses to urban informal settlements in the Global South’s metropolises based on the case of Jakarta, Indonesia. Urban informality governances vary based on their exclusionary consequences and the state’s involvement with the informal community. These two dimensions constitute different government actions, ranging from violent evictions, permissive by the forbearance of eviction rules, and accommodative through community-based distributive interventions. These parallel operations of coercion, neglect, and care logics toward informal settlements suggested a more heterogeneous state’s impulses in governing marginality than what is often portrayed in the literature. Dominant theories in political economy and postcolonial literature have difficulties in elucidating intra-city variation because they view urban poor expulsion as an inevitable impact of global capitalism and colonial legacy. Studies in comparative urban politics have highlighted the uneven public goods distribution among slums through extensive patron-client relationships. Still, they are insufficient to explain why Jakarta’s government evicted its constituents.

I approach this study by focusing on local politics, particularly the relationship between the government and informal communities, which influences the government’s assessment and action. The research applies a comparative analysis of multiple informal communities in Jakarta based on field observation, interviews, and government policies. The findings suggest that government interventions are highly dependent on community distinction factors, mainly the degree of conflicting interests over a particular land, formal and informal leadership, and informal community linkages, cohesion, and strategies. These factors provided decision makers with incentives and constraints in selecting their responses. The study contributes to the scholarship on urban governance and inequality by emphasizing informal communities’ roles in contesting the government’s response, creating negotiated fields with their resources and strategies, and diverting exclusionary outcomes.