Public lands and dimensions of citizenship A comparative analysis of Mexico and Türkiye

This dissertation examines dimensions of social citizenship by analyzing the urban poor’s use of public lands in Mexico City, Mexico, and Istanbul, Türkiye. Historically, the urban poor have used public lands for informal housing. Early literature anticipated a material retrenchment in access to housing under neoliberalism, driven by rising land values and formalization, alongside the spatial exclusion of the urban poor from central areas and by discourses legitimizing these outcomes by promoting self-sufficiency and active market participation.
Against this background, I analyze the urban poor’s land use after neoliberal reforms. Through the lens of public lands, I examine social citizenship comprehensively along three dimensions: the material, spatial, and discursive. Methodologically, I adopt a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative data from fieldwork in the two cities, parliamentary debates, statistical data on the size of public lands, and spatial data on the extent and location of public lands and different types of housing.
Drawing on this original data, I show that, alongside expected trends, there has been material expansion in the urban poor’s access to housing, their spatial inclusion in the city, and discourses emphasizing the poor and passive citizens’ right to land and housing. However, this access is mediated by discretionary practices, dependent on political support or mobilization, and selectively extended to certain groups. As a result, although material, spatial, and discursive access to public lands and housing persists, social citizenship has moved further away from the predictable, unconditional, and universal social rights, rendering the urban poor’s incorporation into social citizenship volatile.