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Abstract
Gulf cities are portrayed as being in a state of constant development. When areas lag behind in the process, their decay strikes immediately as a false note. This is the case in disaffected centers, populated by foreigners usually living on borrowed time, as well as in some peripheral areas, where nationals or long-term residents live. The later urban neglect, in terms of infrastructure upgrade, has remained less known and studied. This paper fills the gap by developing a comparative analysis between the bidun areas or popular housing in Kuwait and the so-called ‘villages’ in Bahrain (in their older cores). While the rapprochement of these two cases may seem odd at first sight, commonalities exist nevertheless based on the common perception of a stigma attached to the place, a feeling of marginalization and neglect, on the part of the inhabitants, that goes hand in hand with the conviction that the situation results from a deliberate government policy. Through the central notion of ‘urban decay', the paper explores the type of relations people of these degraded areas have with their living environment. In the first case, the bidun see the residential areas where they live as a ‘humiliation’ and at the same time as evidence of their fathers serving the country, in support of their application file for naturalization. In the second case, after agricultural/fishing activities ceased with the employment offered in the oil sector, urbanization by encapsulation and land reclamation completed the deprivation of most villages' idiosyncrasies: the popular meaning of the term drifted and mostly refers to the destitute areas that form the core of Baharna identity and since the 1990s and all the more so since 2011, hotbeds of the rebellion.
Funding
The April 2014 research mission in Kuwait was supported by the ERC-funded WAFAW programme.
Notes
1 The scene took place on Doha's Musheireb Street in March 2011. On the Musheireb project, see Scharfenort Citation2013.
2 See also her contribution to this special feature.
3 Buyut sha‘biyya relate specifically to the cheap houses that were built quickly in the 1970s for Bedouin settlement purposes, supposed to be temporary, but that ended up being populated by bidun. It is different from just government housing or what in Kuwait was referred to as ‘limited-income group’ housing (buyut dhuwy al-dakhal al-mahdud). Thanks to Farah al-Nakib for exchanging views on the housing lexicon in Kuwait.
4 The bidun (the word means ‘without’ in Arabic) are a category of people who claim entitlement to Kuwaiti nationality while the state regards them as illegal migrants.
5 Interview with a spokesperson of the Central System to Resolve the Status of Illegal Residents, Kuwait, 29 April 2014.
6 Bidun recently reported that Saudi nationals were hired by the security forces and offered cheap accommodation in the popular housing. Interview, Sulaybiyya, 22 April 2014.
7 Interview, ‘Ardhiyya, 27 May 2008.
8 Al-Ra'i al-‘Am, 17 March 1978.
9 Al Anba’, 7 September 1978.
11 Interview, ‘Ardhiyya, 27 May 2008.
12 Interview, Sulaybiyya, 14 May 2008.
13 Interview, ‘Ardhiyya, 27 May 2008.
14 Interview, Sha‘b, 19 April 2014.
15 Day of the Bidun Martyr, Kuwait Society for Human Rights, Bidun Popular Committee, Kuwait Bar Association, 12 February 2007. Two bidun bodyguards sacrificed their lives to save that of the emir when his convoy was attacked on 25 May 1985. See the DVD, The Truth Through the Eyes of its Witnesses (in Arabic), Kuwait Movies Corporation, 2007.
16 Interview, Kuwait, 29 April 2014.
17 Interview, Kuwait, 22 April 2014.
18 World Bank data.
19 Sawsan al-Sha‘ir, ‘Al-Kalima al-Akhira’ [The Last Word], Al Watan, 7 and 8 July 2012.
20 There are a few exceptions. A new market hall was built in Jidhafs in 2010, to revitalize the commerce of fresh food products.
21 See the contribution of John Burt to this special feature.
22 ‘Towers “Invasion of Villagers' Privacy”’, Gulf Daily News, 29 March 2005.
23 Interview, Manama, July 2012. See Al Najjar Citation1999, 71.
24 Interview, London, 22 January 2014.
Additional information
Claire Beaugrand is a Researcher in Political Science at the Institut Français du Proche Orient. She is a Core-researcher in the research programme WAFAW (When Authoritarianism Fails in the Arab World, 2013-2017) funded by the European Research Council (ERC).