‘They just move in with relatives’: translocal labour migrants and transient spaces in Naivasha, Kenya

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the past four decades, the small town of Naivasha in Kenya has attracted tens of thousands of labour migrants. These migrants are looking for employment on one of the many flower farms located on the shores of Lake Naivasha. This article examines how the migrants, who mostly do not settle in Naivasha permanently, carve out space for themselves in the residential areas where they rent housing. These settlements were not planned for by the government or the flower industry, and are commonly interpreted as hopeless ‘slums’ that are the outcome of sheer neglect. In contrast, this article analyses the settlements as ‘transient spaces’: spaces that are particularly volatile, and that are shaped by the highly mobile practices of their residents. In dialogue with literature on East African urban and informal space, this article thus draws attention to the – partly translocal – agency of settlement residents in shaping their living environment. The article is based on fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016, which included a survey among settlement residents, archival research, and biographical interviews with migrant workers.