Complexities of Infrastructural Citizenship in the Shadow State: Examples from Flint Michigan
Topics: Urban Geography
, Water Resources and Hydrology
, Social Geography
Keywords: Water, Infrastructure, Flint, Voluntary Sector
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 8
Authors:
Melissa Heil, mkheil@ilstu.edu
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Abstract
Within the urban infrastructure literature, there has been extensive analysis of the ways infrastructure is tied to the politics of citizenship: how infrastructure is used by states include and exclude populations, how marginalized populations use infrastructure as a means to claim fuller citizenship, etc. Much of the literature focuses on the relationship between governments and city dwellers, under-examining the role of other actors, like NGOs and philanthropic organizations, in shaping the conditions of infrastructural citizenship. Scholarship on the voluntary sector has identified that a hallmark of neoliberalism has been a transfer of responsibilities from the state to the non-profit sector, increasing their power to include and exclude people from full urban citizenship. This paper examines the role of such “shadow state” organizations in the politics of infrastructural citizenship. Examining the case of the Flint Water Crisis, this paper considers the complexities of infrastructural citizenship in the city. In particular, I interrogate how the emergency water infrastructures developed by a broad constellation of voluntary sector groups (philanthropy, mutual aid groups, social service agencies, etc.) have remade conditions of infrastructural citizenship. The process has been contradictory: the actions of these groups have served as a lifeline in the face state-enacted infrastructural violence, but also incorporate new inequalities into the infrastructural citizenship of Flint residents.
Complexities of Infrastructural Citizenship in the Shadow State: Examples from Flint Michigan
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Virtual Paper Abstract
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