The ambivalence of neighbourhood in urban Burkina Faso

Abstract

In the informal settlement of Sarfalao, in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso in south-western Burkina Faso, relations between newcomers and long-term residents in the neighbourhood were strained by the competition for living space and the opportunities to build a livelihood in the city. These tensions followed the involuntary return of large numbers of Burkinabe migrant workers from Côte d'Ivoire in the period 2000–2007 in particular, due to the civil war there. In this context, newcomers attempted to build relations and alliances with their neighbours while being treated with resentment by long-term residents who were overwhelmed by their mass arrival. The struggle for integration depended on the ability of each arriving family to assimilate local norms of respectability, making the neighbourhood the stage upon which the newcomers’ morality was displayed and judged. While neighbourhood could potentially become the locus of kinship-like ties of relatedness and integration, it was experienced as a space of vital, yet ambivalent social and spatial relationships.