Thesis for the Research Master Urban Studies by Davita Coronel University of Amsterdam, June 20th 2019
Supervisor: Dr. Prof. Rivke Jaffe Second reader: Dr. Hebe Verrest Student number: 10512829
Table of Content
Abstract p. 2
Chapter 1. Introduction p. 3
Chapter 2. Theoretical framework p. 5
Introduction p. 5
Urban informality: from the margins to the centre p. 5 Opening up urban informality: actors, settings and the state p. 6 The relevance of security governance and the role of legitimacy p. 7 The usefulness of urban informal practices p. 9
Aim of the project p. 9
Conclusion p. 10
Chapter 3. Studying urban informality in a stigmatized fieldwork setting
p. 11
Introduction p. 11
Red light districts: fieldwork in a stigmatized setting p. 11
Case selection p. 12 Interviews p. 12 Participant Observation p. 13 Media analysis p. 14 Positionality p. 14 Data analysis p. 15
Chapter 4. De Wallen and Kamathipura: contextualization of cases p. 16
Introduction p. 16
De Wallen and Kamathipura: historical red light areas p. 16
Legal context of sex work p. 18
Threats to security and responses p. 19
Conclusion p. 22
Chapter 5. Legitimacy in the move to informalization p. 23
Introduction p. 23
Room for manoeuvre p. 23
Using lack of transparency p. 24
Personalization p. 26
Conclusion p. 27
Chapter 6. Legitimacy in the move to formalization p. 29
Introduction p. 29
Limiting room for manoeuvre p. 29
Transparency p. 30
Depersonalization p. 32
Conclusion p. 33
Chapter 7. Conclusion p. 34
Introduction p. 34
Answering the research questions p. 34
Intervention in the debate of urban informality p. 35 Limitations and scope for further research p. 36
References p. 37
Abstract
Urban informality has developed tremendously as a concept in the past decades. From specific spatial categorizations such as slums or street hawking in the global South, scholars now increasingly understand urban informality as a negotiable value in the governance of cities across the globe. I argue that within this conceptualization, authors regard urban informality as a byproduct of processes of negotiation and contestation in governance arrangements. This overlooks the usefulness of urban informality to these negotiations. It also overlooks how both formal and informal practices can be relevant tools to rely on alternately. In this thesis, I study the role of formal and informal practices as tools in the governance arrangements of two cities previously deemed incomparable. I focus on security governance, as the state does not act as a unitary actor in providing security. In diffuse governance, what legitimizes the actors to operate? I show how state and non-state actors can use room for manoeuvre, lack of transparency and personalization to gain normative and pragmatic legitimacy and reinforce their status in the governance arrangement. Furthermore, actors can use the formal counterparts of these practices to gain pragmatic legitimacy. This paper builds on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2018 and 2019 in the two red light districts (RLDs) of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Mumbai, India.
Chapter 1. Introduction
Friday nights in De Wallen, the red light district in the city centre of Amsterdam, are crowded. Through this crowd of tourists, stag parties, cyclists and bicycle taxis, my group mates and I try to make our way. I joined a group of residents and a police officer during one of their inventorisations of safety and security issues in the neighbourhood. The group mates are united in a collective I call the Urban Huddle. During regular meetings and inventorisations like these they discuss the safety, security and public order in De Wallen. In small, dark and deserted alleys the members check the state of the lighting and whether loose tiles in the pavement hide the merchandise of drug peddlers. The residents and the police know the area and its users well, and are well known too: ‘You see how those drug dealers scattered when they saw us coming?’, one of the residents remarks. During our walk, we greet several colleagues who try to make the area safe and secure. We pass by the enforcers of the municipality. Like the police, they enforce on safety and security in public order. Their uniforms are dark blue, and resemble the police’s uniforms that are black with hints of green. Unlike the police, who are a manifestation of the national state, the enforcers do not have the authorization to carry weapons or use force. A bit further along the canal, we see the hosts in their bright orange jackets on their way back after their shift. A private security company employs the hosts, in coordination with the municipality, but they are not allowed to rely on their background as private security guards. They can not surveill or enforce, as that is the domain of the state. Instead, the hosts try to friendly nudge the visitors to the right behaviour, such that residents experience less trouble from them. For example, they inform visitors that they can get a fine when they consume alcohol in public. In the evening they stop their work. The rudeness (due to intoxication) of visitors often makes their work difficult as people stop listening to them.
The Urban Huddle, the police, the enforcers and the hosts are all part of the security governance in De Wallen. Instead of the state operating as a single, unitary actor in providing security, other actors take part in the execution of this task. Together, these actors provide an order and to do so, they have to negotiate legal norms and the different and sometimes competing interests of residents, entrepreneurs (including sex workers) and visitors. In these negotiations they have diverging capabilities to wield resources such as power and legitimacy.It is in governance constellations of this kind that scholars have recently become interested to study urban informality.
This new focus on governance means that the study of urban informality moves beyond specific spatial categorizations in the domain of housing such as slums or favelas, or in the domain of employment such as street hawking. Furthermore, by conceptualizing urban informality as ‘emerging’ from the negotiations and contestations in constructing order, authors such as Hilbrandt et al. (2017) have paved the way to incorporate cities of the imagined global South and global North in the same analysis. This offers the opportunity to also move beyond the bias in the study of urban informality, as academics mostly study it in countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. This has led to insights in a diverse array of settings, from the practice of creating dwellings on urban allotment gardens in Berlin (Hilbrandt et al., 2017) to the state-tolerated informal niche providers for burial practices in Hong Kong (Fokdal, 2019).
However, I argue that with the focus on governance, scholars treat urban informality as a derivative, as urban informality is reduced to something that ‘emerges’ from the negotiations and contestations. That means that authors overlook the role of urban informality in these
negotiations. Furthermore, formal practices can be similarly of use to these negotiations, as actors can alternately rely on these practices. In this thesis, I will focus on the usefulness of (in)formal practices in governance.
To do this, I will introduce the empirical domain of security governance, as authors have increasingly observed different formations of state and non-state actors in the provision of security. These actors can include for example private security companies or neighbourhood communities (Diphoorn and Berg, 2013, Van Holstein, 2018). Furthermore, the focus on security as an empirical domain brings with it the issue of diffuse legitimacy: as the state does not operate in a coherent way, other actors have to secure legitimacy to aid in the execution of this task. How are (in)formal practices useful to these negotiations in security governance? I argue that both formal and informal practices can serve as tools to gain, maintain or lose legitimacy (Fokdal, 2019).
To study this, I use an urban comparative framework with two cities previously deemed incommensurable. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the red light districts (RLDs) of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Mumbai, India. In total, I spent 4 months doing fieldwork in Mumbai and 6 months in Amsterdam. The choice to focus on these settings does not stem from an association between sex work and informality, criminality and/or illegality. As Hilbrandt et al. (2017) and Fokdal (2019) have shown, urban informality is equally applicable to urban allotment gardens and burial practices. I choose to focus on the historical RLDs of Amsterdam (De Wallen) and Mumbai (Kamathipura) because they are mixed usage neighbourhoods. This means that residents, entrepreneurs (including sex workers) and visitors have different interests that compete in the construction of order. Actors in security governance have to negotiate these interests and motivations.
I will answer these research questions: 1. What role do urban informal practices play in the legitimization of actors and practices in security governance in De Wallen and Kamathipura? And when it comes to the first research question: 2. What are the differences and similarities between De Wallen and Kamathipura? Per case, I will try to answer these subquestions: a. Who is active in providing security? b. What is the mode of (in)formal practices? c. What discourses surround these practices? I focus on the practice of using room for manoeuvre, using lack of transparency and personalization, as they were recurring practices in both De Wallen and Kamathipura. I pay similar attention to their formal counterparts.
What follows is a discussion of the theoretical framework in chapter 2. In chapter 3, I will outline the methodology of the research, followed by a contextualization of De Wallen and Kamathipura in chapter 4. In chapter 5, I discuss the role of urban informal practices in the discussion dedicated to the move of informalization. In chapter 6, I do the same but then dedicated to the move of formalization. Chapter 7 contains the wrap-up and concluding remarks.
Chapter 2. Theoretical framework
Introduction
In this chapter, I will first discuss different conceptualizations of urban informality to show the diversity of phenomena it can denote. I will show how research shaped urban informality to subsume this diversity of actors, practices and places under the same header of negotiability in governance, where informality ‘emerges’ from the construction of order. With the new focus on governance I introduce shortly the empirical domain of security governance as a relevant but overlooked sector in urban informality. The focus on security governance also singles out the issue of diffuse legitimacy in governance arrangements. I argue that within this diffuse legitimacy, urban informal and formal practices are both a way to gain, maintain or lose legitimacy. This happens in a dialectic between informality and legitimacy: urban informality needs to be legitimized, a phenomenon that scholars have studied more often, but at the same time people depend on urban informal practices to gain and maintain legitimacy in security governance. I will use this dialectic between legitimacy and urban informality to critique the idea of ‘emerging’ informality in governance. In this thesis I aim to explore the role that urban (in)formal practices, in this thesis non-exhaustively operationalized by three dimensions, can play in the negotiations of governance rather than solely emerging from it.
Urban informality: from the margins to the center
When it comes to the form of urban informality, there are definitions in abundance. Specific spatial categorizations in the domain of housing such as slums or favelas, or in the domain of employment such as street hawking, have made way for much more abstract forms of urban informality. McFarlane and Waibel (2012) have identified the spatial categorization of informality as only one of four trends in understanding urban informality. A second understanding is informality as an organisational form characterized by the absence of rule-based, explicit and predictable modes of operation. Instead, it is considered as spontaneous and tacit. A third epistemological approach to informality is its categorization as a governmental tool. In this sense, the government is the formal institute that applies the category of informality (to slums for example) to legitimate interventions such as resource allocation or service provision. A fourth and final trend that McFarlane and Waibel (2012) have identified in the conceptualization of informality in urban debates is informality as a negotiable value. The negotiability of value in informality is contrasted with the fixing of value in formality. So, where formalization occur through the fixing of value, informalization occurs through the negotiation of seemingly fixed values. The authors emphasize that these two forms do not exist apart from each other, but can be interchangeable even within institutions over the course of one day.
In the fourth trend of informality as a negotiable value, the formal and informal are closely connected. From the first usage of the term urban informality in the 1970’s in Ghana (Herrle and Fokdal, 2011), scholars have regarded the fringes or the ‘other side’ of urban life as the setting for informality. As the fourth trend however exemplifies, the ongoing shift in conceptualizing urban informality takes the informal out of the margins and makes it central to the daily workings of living in and governing ‘the formal city’. This trend in the literature means moving away from the modernization discourse that paved the path of formalization (Boudreau and Davis, 2017). In this understanding, institutions (such as the United Nations), associate informality with underdevelopment and regard it as something that needs to be fixed (Porter,
2011: 118). When Roy and AlSayyad (2004) argued that urban informality is actually a mode of urbanization, it was no longer something ‘to be fixed’. Instead, they contend that urban informality is a means to fix itself. Here the authors already emphasize the usefulness of urban informality in the domain of urbanization. In the next section, I will show how the focus on urban informality has shifted to governance. With that shift in focus, scholars have lost sight of the centrality and usefulness of urban informality to governance that Roy and AlSayyad identified for the concept within urbanization.
Opening up urban informality: actors, settings and the state
The four trends of conceptualizing urban informality outlined in the previous section each favour different actors and settings of urban informality. Researchers have stretched the concept of urban informality along two axes: the axis of where people practice urban informality and the axis of who practices urban informality. When it comes to the setting of urban informality, several authors have observed a double standard in the perception of informality (Polese, 2015; Jaffe and Koster, 2019). Informality is hardly studied in cities in the global North. The geographical bias in the academic literature seems to partly relate to the developmentalist discourse discussed before: the representation of Western countries and their cities as developed means that, according to imagination, they are advanced on the path of formalization (and others should follow their example) with less manifestations of urban informality. However, Jaffe and Koster (2019) argue that the idea of formality in the global North is a myth. The authors discuss cases of governance within the Netherlands characterized by partial unrule of law, the transfer of public money to private and criminal hands and personalized relationships. In the global South, this would be regarded as corruption. Instead, state officials in the Netherlands rebranded some of these practices as ‘innovative policy’. As the authors argued, scholars are equally susceptible to these (un)purposeful reframings of urban informality as states in the global North try to actively communicate how they adhere to the imagination of the formal state. Informality in the global North may be obscured and difficult to recognize, but it is not non-existent.
A second direction in which authors have extended the concept of urban informality relates to the actors involved in urban informality. Roy (2005) and Jaffe and Koster (2019) argue that scholars often endorse the association between urban informality, poverty and marginality. For example, Devlin shows how the ‘informal emerges under conditions of extreme inequality’ (2011b: 144) by focusing on the urban poor in American cities. To counter this narrative, authors have shown how informality also operates with people in power, for example with ‘informality from above’ (Roy, 2009: 84). Roy provides an insight into the informal workings of the Indian state. She conceives informality ‘as a state of deregulation, one where the ownership, use, and purpose of land cannot be fixed and mapped according to any prescribed set of regulations or the law’ (Roy, 2009: 80). In her account of the territorialized flexibility of the state, she shows how the nature of displacement and settlement on expropriated lands is fickle: ‘It is this territorialized flexibility that allows the state to ‘futureproof’, to make existing land available for new uses, to devalorize current uses and users and to make way for a gentrified future; in short, to plan.’ (Roy, 2009: 84).She makes informality central to the workings of the state in a mode of ‘deregulation’ rather than ‘unregulation’, that is the purposive withdrawal of regulatory power instead of the absence of a governing authority. There is significant similarity between Roy’s concept of deregulation and where Goldstein (2016) uses ‘disregulation’, that also highlights
purposive informal practices of the state in a mode of randomness, inconsistency and flexibility as the state sees fit. For example, Bolivian municipal police officers (comisarios) in the Cancha marketplace in Cochabamba impose some rules and not others. In a similar way Roy (2009) described in India, the state in this example is simultaneously present and absent. Goldstein however prefers the term disregulation over deregulation because the latter implies the deregulation of a previously regulated state (Goldstein, 2016: 7), which is not necessarily the case.
The dynamic between informality ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ has shaped the academic debate to assume that the state operates informally from a distance and urban dwellers engage in an informal ‘localized’ practice. For example, in response to informality from above, Bunnell and Harris (2012: 341) state that it is important to keep the ‘grounded’ and ‘everyday’ dimensions of informality in sight with ethnographic research. However, in a recent development in the study of urban informality, Hilbrandt et al. (2017) have found a way to unite all the different actors on the ground in the shared practice of constructing order. They state: ‘Informality appears to be produced by different actors in the construction of order: it points to the continuous contestation and negotiation in the enforcement of order rather than to a fixed process or practice’ (p. 947). This conceptualization is part of the fourth trend that McFarlane and Waibel (2012) identified of urban informality as a negotiable value. Rather than assigning urban informality to a specific group, such as the marginalized or the powerful state actors, Hilbrandt, et al. (2017) see the all-encompassing nature of urban informality. This is a different perspective than viewing one party as enforcing rules from above and another party avoiding or manoeuvring around these rules and regulations in a ‘tit-for-tat’ fashion.
Specifically through their conception of the state, Hilbrandt et al. (2017) arrive at the grounded and inclusive conceptualization of urban informality. The authors respond to the critique of comparative urbanism to globalize the study of urban informality (Robinson, 2016: 194). Comparative urbanism calls for the greater diversity of theoretical starting points in urban theorizing. Hilbrandt et al. (2017) have taken a significant step forward by writing about urban informality across three contexts in the world: Berlin in Germany, Tallinn in Estonia and Bafatá in Guinea Bissau. To make this possible, the authors build on the conceptualization of urban informality developed in African cities, where ‘informality emerges as a consequence of the complexity and the multiplicity of interests and practices that are intrinsic to the everyday workings of states’ (Hilbrandt, Neves Alves and Tuvikene, 2017: 950). This pushed scholars to study the role of urban informality in the mundane and permeable state (see Haid and Hilbrandt, 2019). This means that the authors no longer conceive of the state as a coherent and rational unity, but instead centralize the messiness of the negotiations and contestations among many different actors that are part of the construction of order. Instead of the simultaneous absence-presence of the state that Roy (2009) and Goldstein (2016) observed, the state here is open-ended and formed through the push and pull of actors and interests in everyday governance. From these negotiations, urban informality emerges, as the negotiations and contestations produce informality.
The relevance of security governance and the role of legitimacy
As the literature shifts to focus on governance and the mundane activities of the permeable state, the empirical domain of security provision is highly relevant. It is an underexplored focus within the study of urban informality, that scholars have mostly directed to labour and housing. The
aim of this project is to focus on security governance in relation to urban informality. The connection of these two fields of study can provide innovative links. In the discourse of the modern nation security is the sole task of the state, but scholars have grappled with the diversity of actors, settings and state-non-state formations in security provision. For example, Grassiani and Diphoorn (2019) introduce the concept ‘security blurs’ to no longer focus on security actors in isolation. Security blurs are ‘the manifestations of security that are visible and identifiable, yet in their inception and performance, they are constructed and made up of a myriad and overlapping set of actors, roles, motivations, values, materialities and power dynamics’ (p. 6). Within these blurs, state and non-state actors come together to provide an order in a similar open-endedness of the state that Hilbrandt et al. (2017) used to introduce urban informality in governance.
Scholars studying security provision have engaged either explicitly or implicitly with urban informality. If urban informality is also a part in the mundane activities of the state, and security provision is one of the major tasks of the (open-ended) state, then a focus on security provision should provide an entry point to make sense of the urban informal practices. For
example, Bakker (2019) outlines the collaboration and the competition between civilian and
state policing actors in Jakarta. In these shifting alliances, the different actors have to balance two dimensions that ‘largely define the range and tolerance of their activities: dedication to the general good, as expressed in performance, appearance and discourse and effectiveness’ (p. 51).
Urban informality as a negotiable value seems to roughly map onto the description of the
collaboration and competition between the security actors. To establish their own role in security governance, both types of actors have to negotiate interests and motivations of their beneficiaries and possibly contest the interests and motivations of their opponents’ beneficiaries.
Furthermore, Bakker (2019) also taps into an important dimension to governance: the toleration of the actors in the governance arrangement. While competing and collaborating, both state and civilian actors have to perform their adherence to the ‘general good’ and communicate the effectiveness of their activities. If they act wrongful, for example by not serving the general good, they can lose their legitimacy. In diffuse governance, the issue of legitimacy becomes pertinent to security. Not all actors in the governance arrangement can equally depend on the state’s monopoly on violence that gives them credibility to act in security provision, so actors have to navigate this predicament. As governance arrangements emphasize the permeability of the state, it also means that legitimacy is more permeable and spread out across a range of actors for different reasons. This resonates with the dynamic that Fokdal (2019) reported in her description of legitimacy, informality and the state in Hong Kong. She argued that legitimacy can be gained, maintained and lost by actors from civil society. She also divides legitimacy into pragmatic, cognitival, moral and normative legitimacy
The focus on security governance shows the intricate relationship between security, legitimacy and urban informality. In the current conceptualization, urban informality is supposed to emerge from the security governance where people negotiate and contest interests and scramble for legitimacy. However, in the next section I argue for the relevance of urban informality within this arrangement, and not as a byproduct.
The usefulness of urban (in)formal practices
The status of urban informality in the governance focus as ‘emerging’ means that it is produced by the constellation of negotiating actors, instead of being an active part of the negotiations. The framing of urban informality as a derivative has led authors to question the usefulness of the term. For example, Herrle and Fokdal (2011) favour a focus on the processes of negotiating power, resources and legitimacy. They discard urban informality itself as a myth. The informality that ‘emerges’ according to Hilbrandt et al. (2017) is then just a label. The ‘labelling’ of urban informality resonates with McFarlane’s and Waibels (2011) third trend where the government labels something as informal to legitimize certain actions. The difference is that here scholars do the labelling. In the conceptualizations by Herrle and Fokdal (2011) and Hilbrandt et al. (2017), urban informality is the outcome of different processes: either the product of a process of labelling by scholars, where informality does not seem to exist on its own but is constructed, or the byproduct of a process of negotiations and contestations in governance.
These developments illustrate McFarlane’s observation (2019) that urban informality is ‘more likely to act as a kind of foil upon which we write the complexity of urban conditions and processes, rather than as a focused object of debate’ (p. 622). Scholars have not addressed the role urban informality can play itself, and specifically the usefulness it may have in negotiations of governance. That also means that authors have overlooked the place that Roy and AlSayyad (2004) gave urban informality next to the ‘the formal’ in the workings of a city. In this thesis, I aim to bring back urban informal practices as a focused object in the governance debate to explore the role it plays in the process itself. Furthermore, I aim to emphasize that informal practices exist side by side with the formal practices within the negotiations to provide order. While there may be trends to informalization, there may be similar moves to dissolve these practices in a move to formalization. Within the governance negotiations, these two approaches can be useful to serve different interests at different times.
The usefulness of (in)formal practices in governance means that they can become a tool. The question then arises: how and to what end do actors use these practices in governance? It is in the relevance of legitimacy to security governance that I aim to find the answer. The question of legitimacy in relation to urban informality often takes the form of how urban informal practices are legitimized. This stems from the notion that, as opposed to legality, urban informality needs to be legitimized (or even obscured or fixed). But it can also work the other way: What role do (in)formal practices play in legitimizing actors and practices in security governance? In this thesis, I explore both sides of this dialectic.
To do this, I make use of an urban comparative framework across the global North - global South divide. I will focus on Amsterdam and Mumbai, and on their red light districts specifically, for reasons that I will explain in chapter 3. The setting for the fieldwork is De Wallen in Amsterdam and Kamathipura in Mumbai.
Aim of the project
I aim to answer these research questions: 1. What role do urban (in)formal practices play in the legitimization of actors and practices in security governance in De Wallen and Kamathipura? 2. Regarding question 1, what are the differences and similarities between De Wallen and Kamathipura? Per case, I will try to answer these subquestions: a. Who is active in providing security? b. What is the mode of (in)formal practices? c. What discourses surround these practices?
While I am aware that the definitions of informality and formality are dependent on social contracts and norms, and on the unequal division of power in society to set those norms, I aim to hold on to a few dimensions of urban informal practices. In the operationalization of urban informality, it is impossible to address the concept as a whole. In Kamathipura and De Wallen, especially relevant dimensions of urban informal practices include the room for manoeuvre, lack of transparency and personalization. These are also recurring dimensions in the literature. Roy’s (2009) discussion on deregulation as the strategic non-enforcement of state regulation exemplifies how some actors may have more room to manoeuvre around formal regulations than others. Secondly, Jaffe and Koster (2019) also discuss the dimensions of personalization and lack of transparency to indicate urban informal practices in governance. Personalization in governance can for example mean that allocation of resources is dependent on personal ties between the allocator and the receiver. Lack of transparency in governance can mean that decision making processes are obscure. I also explored the role of these practices in the move of formalization. I define legitimacy based on Fokdal’s description that ‘legitimacy is socially constructed in the sense that certain actions of an entity are accepted or actors subscribe to them’ (Fokdal, 2019: 584). So I will look into the acceptance and subscription of actors to actors and their practices.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have outlined the development of the concept of urban informality to its status as a derivate of processes of negotiation in governance. Through the focus on security and the issue of diffuse legitimacy, I have argued for the relevance of (in)formal practices. Both can be wielded by actors in the governance arrangement to gain legitimacy. In this thesis, I aim to explore this role.
Chapter 3. Studying urban informality and security in the red light district
Introduction
In this chapter I discuss my methodology, the ethical and practical implications of doing research in a (stigmatized) red light district, the choice of the two cases and considerations regarding my positionality as a researcher. To study the role of urban informal and formal practices in legitimizing actors and practices in the security governance of De Wallen and Kamathipura, I made use of three data collection methods as part of ethnographic fieldwork: semi-structured interviews, participant observation and media analysis. I chose ethnographic research as a methodological approach because of the focus on everyday practices of the mundane state in security governance. This means taking part in everyday life in urban settings. Furthermore, for people to speak freely about issues related to safety, it may be necessary to build up trust over a longer period of time. Furthermore, as a researcher it is difficult to easily recognize or clearly understand informality when using surveys. In total, I spent 4 months doing fieldwork in Kamathipura in the autumn of 2018, and a total of 6 months of fieldwork in De Wallen. In De Wallen, I had prior experience with the research because I took part in a university apprenticeship for four months on the same topic in spring 2018. This already yielded a significant amount of data, before I returned for the additional research period in De Wallen for two months in spring 2019.
Red light districts: fieldwork in a stigmatized setting
Writing about the red light areas, specifically on the topic of security and safety, means engaging with stigmatized neighbourhoods. The public debate around the legalization or criminalization of prostitution makes red light districts a sensitive topic. Surrounded by a discourse of criminality, the areas are often the target of ‘cleansing’ policies (Hubbard, 2004). Aside from the moral objections to prostitution, reasons for such policies are the dangers associated with prostitution such as the presence of human traffickers, pimps, criminal leaders and drug peddlers. De Wallen in Amsterdam have undergone such a ‘cleansing’ policy. The municipality of Amsterdam aimed to tackle the criminal infrastructure by upgrading De Wallen a ten year long project that they announced in 2007. Many coffee shops, window brothels and ‘inferior quality establishments’ closed down, as local government argued that they facilitated money laundering. In the final period of this project, I started my fieldwork. I approached my first respondent, Hans1, a middle aged man and long-term resident and entrepreneur of De Wallen, for an interview on the safety and security of the area. Over the phone he responded calmly but resolutely that he grew tired of people thinking it is such an unsafe neighbourhood. In the past reporters have misused his words to paint a ‘worse’ picture of De Wallen. And the depiction in the media and in people’s imagination of a red light area did not align with his experience of the neighbourhood.
Kamathipura has not experienced such a large scale project to upgrade the area, but it has nonetheless changed significantly over the years. The number of sex workers has decreased drastically, with estimations of 50.000 sex workers in 1992 to 500 in 2018 (Singh, 2016; Borges and Fernando, 2016). Middle class citizens and small scale industries (such as metal scrapping or cloth dying) have increasingly settled in the area. There now exists a tense relationship
between some of the residents, shopkeepers and sex workers. Residents argue that they suffer from the stigma attached to the neighbourhood: they are rejected for college admissions and loans on the basis of their residence in the area, as people think they are involved in the sex business. (Sayed, 2015).
Both cases endure stigmas of criminality and immorality, partly based on unrealistic, outdated or dramatized imaginations of neighbourhood. It is crucial that I do not exacerbate these stigmas with my research. This is a challenge, as the focus of my research are issues such as threats to safety, how people respond to them and the informal character of those practices. This means navigating a fine line between writing about those issues objectively and contributing to the persistent associations between firstly sex work and criminality, but also informality and illegality. Throughout my fieldwork respondents in both cases have argued regularly that their neighbourhood is a neighbourhood like any other. For example, police officers in Kamathipura stated that what can happen in Kamathipura, can also happen in Colaba (an affluent neighbourhood at the boulevard in the South of Mumbai, with the Gateway of India monument and the fancy Taj Hotel). Similarly, when talking about the pickpockets as one of the threats in De Wallen, my respondent Hans emphasized that this is not inherent to the neighbourhood. He would emphasize this with similar issues throughout the interview.
Case selection
If respondents in both cases stated that their neighbourhood is just like any other, the question then becomes: why did I specifically choose the RLD as my fieldwork setting? The red light district provides a relevant entry-point for the topic of this thesis because of the manifold interests vested in this area. Urban governance in general can be messy, as actors need to weigh many interests and favour some interests over others. It is in the messiness of the negotiations and contestations of interests that the practices originate that are relevant to this thesis. Security needs to be governed for all users of the neighbourhood: the different residents, entrepreneurs (including the sex workers) and visitors, with each of them their needs and wishes. Sex workers and other entrepreneurs wish to earn their living undisturbed, while state officials need to address issues such as human trafficking and balance this with the (il)legality of sex work. Residents wish to live there unencumbered, but may experience nuisance by clients of sex workers or other visitors of the neighbourhood. This may all exist against the backdrop of the (re)development of valuable urban land and policies to upgrade the area.
Furthermore, I follow in the footsteps of Hilbrandt et al. (2017) when they argue for the same analytical frame for cities long deemed incomparable. By comparing the RLDs in Amsterdam and Mumbai, I try to address the similarities and differences between them in (in)formal practices and how they legitimize security governance, rather than a priori assuming they are different. De Wallen in Amsterdam and Kamathipura in Mumbai are both historical RLDs in the central areas of the cities. Gentrification processes have changed their appearance and character. I will elaborate on the social context of the cases in Chapter 4.
Interviews
In both red light areas I conducted around 10 interviews with different users of the neighbourhood, on their perceptions of threats and responses to security issues in the area. I tried to map who would go to whom for what issues, to study for example personalization. To get
a grip on legitimization, I asked about what people thought of themselves or others as providers of security, and of their (non)collaboration with others, and why the work of the providers was necessary. Especially asking a respondent about others provided good insights about the discourse and legitimization. See the appendix for the interview guide.
The interviewees of the two cases displayed some similarities, but also context-specific differences. In both cases, I managed to speak to police officers, residents and entrepreneurs who are all subject to, and/or involved in, at least one form of security provision. Other relevant actors differed per case. In Kamathipura, it was important to also speak to NGO employees who are especially important for sex workers and their children, as they often offer shelter and mediate in police help. I also had the opportunity in Kamathipura to speak to sex workers and children of sex workers through an NGO. In De Wallen I interviewed a private security guard who plays an important role in security as he and his colleagues are often stationed inside and in front of clubs and bars. Furthermore, brothel managers who rent out rooms to sex workers (‘kamerverhuurders’ in Dutch) are by municipal rules required to be available for sex workers in case they need help dealing with customers, and were previously also obliged to conduct interviews with sex workers to identify forced sex work. It was also easier in De Wallen to identify the civil servants responsible for policy-making. In Kamathipura this turned out to be difficult. None of my contacts had connections to local or state government officials specifically involved in the planning of the area. People directed me to the health department of the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC). Upon arriving there I also paid a visit to the building and infrastructure department but no one in either department could tell me much about the governmental plans and policy.
All my interviewees were held on the basis of anonymity and confidentiality. Therefore when I quote interviewees, I use pseudonyms. In Kamathipura, I had the help of a translator for the interviews that I could not conduct in English. The translator also joined me during a few visits to Kamathipura, to facilitate informal chats with residents and entrepreneurs.
Participant Observation
In addition to the formal interviews, I became acquainted with the red light districts by hanging out in the area for a few days a week, during the 4 months in Kamathipura and the 6 months in De Wallen. During these periods I tried to connect to residents, entrepreneurs and security actors such as police, while also trying to observe security-related aspects such as: who patrols here? To whom do they (not) talk? What do residents do when somebody needs help? How do police officers, residents and entrepreneurs (including sex workers) respond to each other? If there are offenses, for example a theft, how do people respond?
In the beginning, my participant observation mostly consisted of walking around, drinking tea or coffee here and there while informally conversing with people in the area. This led to different contacts per case. In Kamathipura, I became friends with a few shopkeepers, as I often sat in front of their shops to observe what was going on around me and to chat with bypassers. I was also able to attend a workshop for sex workers organized by an NGO after I had interviewed the employees. My presence sparked a lot of attention, in both bad and good ways. As a Western and white woman in a Mumbai neighbourhood that is not frequently visited by tourists, my presence was out of the ordinary. People were more interested in what I was doing there, and after I got used to the neighbourhood this made it easier to connect to people. Over time people recognized me more, and invited me for chai. Being a white woman made people
keep an eye out for me. A few times, people approached me, asking whether I was in trouble or needed police. Police officers asked my translator in Hindi to watch over me as they considered Kamathipura a dangerous area. My acqiantances also helped me shaking off unwanted attention of male visitors of the area. It happened a few times that men followed me, interested in having ‘a foreign girlfriend’. When one time a man refused to go away while I sat in front of my friend’s shop, an older sex worker who often said ‘hey my baby!’ when she saw me, as if she was my mother, stood between him and me and shooed him away.
In De Wallen, my presence was much less conspicuous. Not necessarily because Amsterdam is my hometown but because De Wallen is a popular destination for many tourists. Walking around there means residents and entrepreneurs primarily regard you as a tourist. After establishing initial contact with key informants, I attended the gatherings of the Urban Huddle, and joined them on their inventory patrols. I walked with the hosts during one of their patrols. After doing fieldwork in Kamathipura I understood the importance of NGOs and other organizations, so coming back in Amsterdam I visited the Prostitute Information Centre (PIC) to talk about their work and role in the neighbourhood.
Media analysis
In studying the media attention dedicated to the red light areas in newspapers, I decided to limit the relevant period from 2014 - 2019. Within this period, I searched for relevant newspaper articles mentioning the name of the red light area and keywords such as ‘informal’, ‘security’, ‘private security’, ‘security guard’, ‘police officer’, ‘vigilantism’, ‘pimp’, ‘weapon’. The aim was to find articles mentioning specific actors or acts, their context and the discourse around them. For example, how do police officers behave? And how do people view these actions? How do people react to the ‘hosts’ in Amsterdam? Per case, the search yielded around 15 articles that I included in the data analysis.
For De Wallen, I could make use of the database LexisNexis. De Wallen are a popular topic in the Amsterdam and Dutch media. When it comes to security issues specifically, in de Wallen the attention is mostly related to the insecurity resulting from the large number of (inebriated) visitors, for both tourists (as they are often the target of pickpockets and fake drug dealers) and residents.
A similar database to Lexisnexis was absent for the Mumbai case, so I searched for newspaper articles on the websites of three newspapers: the Times of India (including the Mumbai Mirror from the same publisher), the Indian Express and the Hindu. In Kamathipura reporters seem to write less regularly about the area regularly, and mostly in relation to the sex workers and the stigma associated with the sex work.
Positionality
While engaging in participant observation, it was easier for me to apprehend the threats by visitors of the area as voiced by my respondents. In De Wallen, I could easily identify with the complaints of residents and entrepreneurs in my research and in the media regarding the overwhelming presence of (intoxicated) visitors. This adds to my experiences as a resident in Amsterdam, as I usually avoid the city centre because of the many tourists. Similarly in Kamathipura, I have experienced the negative effects of visitors to the area, which I mostly understood as clients of sex workers, as visitors interested in me followed me around. I realise now that I have not taken tourists seriously into account in my fieldwork. Rather than engaging
with visitors in both cases, I talked ‘about them’ in my fieldwork. I have made visitors, understood as tourists in De Wallen and possible clients of sex workers in Kamathipura, as ‘the other’ in the area. This personal bias resonated with the perceptions of my respondents, that intensified this bias. For example, when I asked Aswin Bhai, the owner of the shop where I used to sit often in Kamathipura, who the man that followed me was, he answered: ‘Bad guy. Red light area’, while he made a gesture with his hands ‘to the outside’.
Furthermore, I also need to take into account that some respondents may have been eager to talk to me because of the political motivations for their actions. For example, one resident community, that I call Sher community, wanted to make sure I did not think they were doing bad things in their patrols against sex workers. In the next chapter, I discuss these actors more in depthly.
Data analysis
For the data analysis, I collected all my material, including field work notes, interview transcripts and newspaper articles in the program Atlas.ti. 8 (2018) for Windows. Here I coded the relevant passages according to the dimensions of urban informality of which room for manoeuvre, lack of transparency and personalization became especially relevant to my cases. I also coded the formal opposites of these dimensions, as well as the actors and the way people talked about the practices and actors.
Chapter 4. De Wallen and Kamathipura: a contextualization of cases
Introduction
In this chapter I will introduce De Wallen and Kamathipura through a short discussion of the recent history of the areas and the legal context of sex work. The history of De Wallen is important to understand the formalization process that local government started in 2007. And for Kamathipura, it shows the development of the area into a middle-class neighbourhood rather than a red light area. These developments are the backdrop for the issues that I will describe. The legal context of sex work is especially relevant in Kamathipura, where sex workers visibly negotiate legal dimensions of their profession which in turn sparked protests by residents. Furthermore, to give a short introduction of the actors and issues I will discuss later in the thesis, I will outline the current threats to security as perceived by respondents and what actors are present to address these issues. This is already an answer to the sub question of who is active in providing security. I summarize this in Table 1.
De Wallen is located in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. Amsterdam has a population of around 850.000 residents. The total population of the Netherlands (roughly 18 million) is less than the population of Mumbai alone. Mumbai is the biggest city of India, with currently an estimated population of a bit over 20 million (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2018).
De Wallen and Kamathipura: historical red light areas
De Wallen and Kamathipura are both the historical red light areas located in the central city area. De Wallen constitute several canals connected by small alleys. Window brothels are scattered along the central canal. The area’s character as a red light district attracts many visitors. The display of sex workers impresses them, and there are countless opportunities for (erotic) entertainment such as bars, shows and coffee shops. Currently the state has a tight grip on the area, whereas in the 1970’s and 1980’s a criminal network operated in the neighbourhood. In 2007, the local government argued that de Wallen supported the infrastructure for criminal activities such as money laundering and human trafficking (Bestuursdienst Gemeente Amsterdam / OVV / Van Traateam, 2007). The municipality announced it would close down a number of coffee shops and window brothels. They also bought up real estate that was allegedly in the hands of criminals. The aim of this ten year long project was to limit the ‘criminal undercurrent’ and to economically upgrade the area.
In popular imagination, Kamathipura is considered as one of Asia’s biggest red light districts, and India’s second biggest after Sonagachi in Kolkata. By the end of the 18th century, the area was home to the Kamathis, construction labourers from the Telangana state of India. The area developed under the British rule into a red light district where the spread of venereal disease could be better contained. The sex business in the area however has diminished tremendously to the point that residents question why people still call it one of Asia’s biggest red light areas (Borges and Fernando, 2016). The number of sex workers has decreased from 50.000 in 1992 to 1.600 in 2009 (Arora, 2015), and recent articles report 500 sex workers in 2018 (Kamath, 2018). Buildings that were previously brothels now house industries such as metal scrapping and tailoring. The buildings of residents and entrepreneurs are old, around 100 years, and overdue for renovation. But when it comes to the future of the area, people are left in the dark. There seems to be no plan for Kamathipura. The area consists of 14 lanes, and sex business
is officially limited to 11th lane. The remarkable visibility of prostitution in Amsterdam is not present here. During the day, sex workers post casually on street corners to attract customers. More appear at night.
Figure 1. Map of Amsterdam and location of De Wallen.
Legal context of sex work
In both India and the Netherlands, sex work is legal. Sex workers in the Netherlands need to be registered as an ‘Independent Without Employees’ (Dutch: Zelfstandige Zonder Personeel, ZZP) at the Chamber of Commerce. The window brothels characteristic of De Wallen are officially legal since 1994 in Amsterdam. Before 1994, the local authorities tolerated their presence in despite of a brothel ban in 1911 (Aalbers and Deinema, 2012). The brothel managers who rent out rooms need to be present all the time. Each room is supposed to have an alarm button that alerts the manager on duty. The managers were also obliged to conduct intake interviews to identify possible victims of human trafficking. A judge ruled this practice inappropriate in 2017 (Het Parool, 2017). Brothel managers are not trained to identify human trafficking, and the interviews violated the privacy of the sex workers. When signing a contract to rent rooms, it is still prohibited for a sex worker to bring somebody else.
The Indian government legalized sex work officially in 1956. However, brothels in India are not legal. It is allowed to sell sex for money, but only in private spheres. This means it is also prohibited to solicit on the streets. Organised prostitution, where others depend on the income of sex workers, is also illegal. This criminalizes pimps and brothel keepers (Kotiswaran, 2014). Although officially illegal, the presence of brothels in Kamathipura seems to be tolerated (similar to the situation in De Wallen before legalization in 1994). Other than raids, there is no police action targeted at closing the brothels. There seem to be two views on the raids: one as the harassment of sex workers and the other as the rescue of the underaged and victims of human trafficking. Raids occur sometimes in cooperation with an NGO, the main reason for intervention then is the rescue of underage girls and/or victims of human trafficking. This can lead to the arrest of a brothel keeper and (temporarily) close down a brothel. However, the raids cause a lot of unrest and contestation. Amrita, a sex worker who used to work in Kamathipura, didn’t understand why police conducted raids. She reminisced how all the sex workers started running during a raid to not be arrested, but sometimes a woman police officer dressed as a sex worker followed them to ultimately arrest them.
Figure 2. Map of Mumbai and location of Kamathipura.
Threats to security and responses
In De Wallen, residents and entrepreneurs voice similar complaints about the number of visitors (of tourists, not all customers of sex workers) and the threats they bring along with them: the presence of (fake) drug dealers and pickpockets. These threats however mostly exist for visitors, not residents, as perpetrators often target the tourists. Residents oppose the number of visitors in their area and how they ‘live’ their neighbourhood. This means for example jams in the alleys, drunken stag parties, shouting, peeing and puking on the streets. For sex workers, this can hamper their work as less customers might enter a window brothel with all the onlookers. Also the visitors violate their privacy, often taking pictures.
The state has two actors at their disposal to deal with these issues: the police officers and the enforcers of the municipality. Like the police, the enforcers (in Dutch: ‘handhavers’) enforce on public order, but they do not have the same authorities as the police officers have. This means they can not use violence but they can fine people and sometimes arrest them (although they do not have the means yet to act on that arrest, such as a bus to take the people away). However, enforcers often find themselves in violent situations so they requested ‘defense tools’ such as a baton and pepper spray, but the municipality is not (yet) willing to give them that. At the same time, the police enforce less in public order as they are often involved with tracking down high crime (such as human trafficking) and paperwork in the office. To navigate these different capabilities and limited resources, the police and the enforcers continue to formalize their cooperation. A standby team of police officers serves as the back up to to enforcers on the streets in De Wallen. They also started to train together. Enforcers do not have the same training as police officers, and it can still occur that someone previously employed to work on waste collection in another part of town, now works as an enforcer in De Wallen.
In addition to punishing wrongful behaviour in the neighbourhood (such as public urination or alcohol consumption) where there are less resources available in police and
enforcement, the municipality also started to ‘inform’ the right kind of behaviour. For this they use the hosts. The hosts walk around, welcome the visitors, and inform them about the residents living there and the possibility of a fine for drinking in public. The first group of hosts had a background in security, such as airport personnel or event security. The municipality has cancelled the contract with the private security company that employed the hosts, and now aims to employ students to inform the visitors. They involve the residents in the selection of the students who should communicate ‘the right’ kind of attitude. Residents and entrepreneurs often critiqued the previous hosts, first of all because they couldn’t do anything other than informing despite their background in security, and second because some of them lacked the proper attitude. This often meant that they were not social enough. There are also private security guards of clubs and bars, but they can not surveill and enforce in public space, just like the hosts.
Residents and entrepreneurs are also involved in the Urban Huddle where they discuss in confidentiality the issues relating to safety and security in De Wallen with the municipality and the police. In addition to these meetings, they conduct weekly inventories led by the residents to check on the current state of De Wallen, to communicate to the municipality what they need to address better.
In Kamathipura, the police officers state that they are there for everyone. They often try to solve issues such as fights or disagreements about stolen money between sex workers and customers in Kamathipura itself, rather than taking them to the Nagpada police station closeby. Often the threat of a formal complaint at the station scares people off, just as asking visitors: ‘Why are you in Kamathipura in the first place? Should we tell your wife or parents?’ It is a custom for police stations to appoint Mohalla committees in the neighbourhood, where residents of different ethnic and religious backgrounds come together to talk about the safety in their neighbourhood.
Although police officers say that they are there for everyone, it is mostly entrepreneurs such as shopkeepers or restaurant owners who find their way to them directly. In media and interviews, sex workers argued that they experience violence from customers and harassment of police or residents, often mentioning bribes to police officers to keep them at bay while they conduct their business. Instead, there is a network of NGOs active in Kamathipura to cater to the needs of sex workers. They offer day and night care for the kids, life skill development opportunities or mental counselling. Gita, who used to live in Kamathipura as a child, states that sex workers ‘run to the nearest NGO’ if something happens to them such as abuse or theft. NGO workers speak their language (as sex workers in Kamathipura often are migrants) and are able to mediate with police help. Residents and an employee at the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC, which is mostly there for cleaning issues and its health department operates an STD clinic) say that the bulk of good work for sex workers is done by the NGOs, not the government. Also when it comes to fighting human trafficking NGO’s work together with the police, Dishani NGO specifically.
Residents experience nuisance from the ‘the outsiders’ of the area: the customers of sex workers, pimps or drug peddlers. Customers follow women and children in the area. Some residents have organized themselves in groups to take action, using contributions from their resident members. For example, a resident foundation that I call The Khan community, led by Bilal Bhai (Bilal Brother) took action against drug peddlers and residents who lure people from outside into their homes to ultimately rob them. Another group of residents, the Sher community, started patrolling the streets to make sex workers move inside the brothels. A
member also remarked that for them, the police doesn’t come immediately in the picture as they try to solve everything themselves. They build cases of issues, writing everything down, and if needed, they will bring this to the police.
Table 1. Overview of threats, protector, and beneficiaries
Threat Protector Beneficiaries
De Wallen High crime, fake drug
peddlers, offenses in public order
Police officers Residents and
Entrepreneurs, visitors
Offenses in public order Enforcers Residents and entrepreneurs Inebriated visitors within establishments Private security guards Visitors Nuisance by tourists Fines for visitors
Hosts Residents
Visitors Offenses in public order
and safety
Urban Huddle Residents
Kamathipura High crime, offenses in
public order
Police officers Residents and
entrepreneurs (incl. sex workers)
Quarrels, thefts, offenses in public order
Sher community
Resident members
Quarrels, thefts, offenses in public order
Khan Foundation
Resident members
Safety issues in general Mohalla Committee
Residents
Trafficking, children’s and personal health and livelihood issues
Dishani NGO and rest of network
Conclusion
In this chapter I outlined the historical and social context in De Wallen and Kamathipura and the legal context of sex work. In the discussion of the current threats to security and the responses, I have outlined the answer to the first research sub question on who is active in providing security. I have given an overview of the answer in Table 1. In chapter 5 and 6, I will address the mode of informal and formal practices. Through a discussion of some of these actors in depthly, I will show how they use formal and informal practices to answer sub question of the mode and discourses of these practices.
Chapter 5. Legitimacy in the move of informalization
Introduction
In this chapter I will expand upon the practices of some of the actors outlined in chapter 4, to address the sub question of how they use the informal practices (the mode) and what discourses surround these practices. In the conclusion, I will briefly touch upon preliminary differences and similarities between De Wallen and Kamathipura while addressing the sub questions of mode of informal practices and the discourses that surround them. The practices that I discuss are the usage of room for manoeuvre, lack of transparency and personalization in the moves of informalization in De Wallen and Kamathipura. These dimensions (partly) overlap. For example, the discussions of room for manoeuvre and lack of transparency that I discuss in relation to De Wallen are interspersed with dimensions of personalization. I focus more on personalization itself when discussing the move of informalization in Kamathipura. I outline how especially in De Wallen the actors gain legitimacy by using these practices and reinforce their position in the security governance arrangement.
Room for manoeuvre
In this section, I will focus on the room for manoeuvre of police officers and enforcers of the municipality in De Wallen. The working style of the police officials and the municipal enforcers is different, and for that, I show how some entrepreneurs appreciate them differently. Police officers use more room for manoeuvre than enforcers through their personalized relationship with the neighbourhood, a practice that legitimizes the officers and at the same time is legitimized as its status as an exemplary practice.
The appreciation of the police officers and the enforcers quickly come up when I talk to Lisa, to discuss her work in De Wallen over coffee. Lisa is a representative for a group of entrepreneurs in De Wallen, known as a ‘street realtor’ (Dutch: straatmakelaar). Lisa tells me that ideally they would like to see municipal enforcers act more like the police officers in the neighbourhood in the way they deal with things. Usually, municipal enforcers venture out on the street to surveil one particular issue in public order strictly, inevitably creating clashes with the entrepreneurs. She gives the example of the use of pavement in front of establishments. The municipality wants to prevent dangerous obstructions for the public on the street, so entrepreneurs are limited in the space they can use for terraces. Enforcers give fines for entrepreneurs overstepping their assigned space, even when the objects are innocent decorations on quiet streets: ‘Well then an enforcer appears and says: “This is not allowed” and they get into a clash with the entrepreneurs… The flexibility (in Dutch: souplesse) that police officers do have, new enforcers often lack.’ Lisa juxtaposes the enforcers’ strictness with the police’s flexibility, a flexibility that comes with the knowledge of the neighbourhood and its users: ‘What entrepreneurs and residents often say is: “Okay, enforcers, fine, but they have to know the neighbourhood.” They have to be a type of police officers, instead of people flown in from outside.’
There is a ‘local’ way of doing things that comes with immersion in the neighbourhood, when one gets acquainted with the customs and needs of, in this case, the entrepreneurs. Locals regard enforcers as outsiders. As Abel, a brothel manager I spoke to, also stated: ‘People in general clash with the enforcers. Because they…. I don’t know, they enforce based on their own opinion.’ Based on the examples he gave, this means with little regard for the current social
situation (for example why people park on pavements, for which they then get a ticket). ‘Their own opinion’ should therefore not be understood as the enforcers personal opinion of the matter that gives them the freedom to act as they like, but it is the unpersonal opinion of formal rules and regulations. ‘Their own opinion’ can therefore be better understood as ‘not our opinion’, that is the shared social understanding of the insiders in De Wallen that Abel and Lisa appreciate of police officers.
Jack, a friendly police officer, can understand the dynamic between the enforcers and the entrepreneurs. Jack is part of De Wallen as a police officer and as a resident in the past. In the ‘90’s, he was head of the vice team that tracked down crimes in the prostitution business. He earned the nickname ‘speedy gonzales’, as Hans, the long-time resident of De Wallen, described to me. Apparently Jack solved 27 cases of human trafficking in 1,5 years, whereas his predecessor only solved 1 or 2 cases. According to Jack, as a police officer you have to operate in a grey area. There are instances where fines could be either justified or not, such as in the case on parking on the pavement, or people letting a dog run free. He states: ‘The police wouldn’t... I wouldn’t give a ticket then. And that is difficult because you have to operate in a grey area. And some people have a black-and-white view on the matter, and you have to find your own way in that.’
According to the conceptualization of Hilbrandt et al. (2017), informality in this case is produced as the inconsistencies between state actors, the police officers and enforcers of the municipality, that stem from their respective negotiations with rules and regulations. However, this understanding loses sight of how police officers use their ‘flexibility’ around formal rules and regulations, that subsequently gives them legitimization by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs appreciate the police officers more, and emphasize their closeness to the neighbourhood. Conversely, the entrepreneurs look down on the work of enforcers in a discourse of distance: they depend on ‘their way’ of doing things, with less room for negotiation, and not ‘our’ way.
While legality often does not need to be legitimized, as opposed to informality, this does point to the way in which both enforcers, as the manifestation of the unpersonal and formal rules and regulations, and their practice are delegitimized. Not only have the police officers gained legitimization through their use of the informal practice, but the informal practice gains legitimacy as well. If enforcers were to behave more like police officers, letting go of the black-and-white view on the matter, they would fit into the neighbourhood better. The legitimization of both the police officers and the informal practice itself is their concordance with social norms in the area. Fokdal (2019: 584) describes this as normative legitimacy ‘that reflects socially desirable norms according to the contextual values and standards.’ Furthermore, the discussion on the room for manoeuvre can be tied to the power of the sovereign to impose an exception to the rule (Picker, 2019). Both enforcers and police officers operate as manifestations of ‘the state’ in daily life, albeit a somewhat difficult and bureaucratic mix of national and municipal actors. Police officers seem more able to wield the power of the sovereign to impose an exception to the rule, in this case as a form of room for manoeuvre, than the enforcers. This practice affirms the status of the police as the sovereign.
Creating lack of transparency
In this section, I will show how actors use lack of transparency to create efficient interventions, and how this legitimizes these actors in governance and the practice itself. In this case, I contrast how people talk about dealing with issues in a meeting of the Urban Huddle with the individual working style of one of the residents I call Thom, who is also part of the Huddle. Thom gains
