Spatial justice and resilience: Unpacking community responses to lockdown policies in Lagos

Abstract

Scholars from diverse disciplines have evidenced the political, social and economic dynamics at play in the distribution of basic services which often produce communities with long-standing disadvantages. With COVID-19, the resilience of affected communities awakened interest in unpacking how residents respond to disasters such as disease outbreaks and how they anticipate future occurrences. This article urges a novel alternative thinking about how community resilience capacities can be deployed to bring about long-term changes to tackle historic disadvantages. Based on qualitative data collected during the 2020 Lagos COVID-19 lockdown, it evidences the necessity of adaptive and absorptive resilience capacities during times of crisis, but argues that these reactions do not inherently correct long-standing disadvantages. Rather, they could inadvertently lead to communities bearing the cost of resilience actions. Drawing from spatial justice principles, resilience theory and community actions, a novel conceptual framework for reordering resilience capacities is produced, which proposes that transformative resilience capacities deployed before crisis, and framed within a spatial justice lens can lead to fundamental changes in disadvantaged communities. While recognising limitations, within the robustness of good governance, this approach is capable of providing a platform for balancing power relations, engendering accountability, participation and training, and remedying past injustices in service provision, while protecting communities from the risks of future health crisis.