EXPLORING INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS THROUGH THE LENS OF HUMAN MOBILITY. Employing human movements as an analytical device for informing approaches of intervention in contexts of inequalities. A case study of the City of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Global South informal settlements have caught the attention of several scholars from various disciplines who have contributed to enhance the theoretical debate around them. Furthermore, over the years, there has been an improvement in the international policies, promoting a more sustainable in-situ upgrading approach, over slum clearance initiatives; while some informal settlements' communities have received recognition and achieved some rights. Nevertheless, beyond still sporadic successes, the persistence of precarious living conditions in many informal settlements in the poorest corners of the world constantly solicits to deepen the knowledge of this urban phenomenon and question the role of urban policies and planning strategies in challenging inequalities. In line with this intent, the dissertation aims to contribute to an in-depth knowledge of Global South informal settlements, by exploring them through the lens of human mobility. More particularly, it investigates informal settlements in relation to people's migratory trajectories. The need to use human mobility as a privileged point of view starts from the observation of the actual reality of informal settlements, focused within the South African context, that utterly shows how they are deeply marked by histories of people on the move. Informal settlements appear like complex realities embedded in a vast network of human movements, and inscribed with multiple migratory trajectories driven by a plethora of ambitions, necessities or constraints. Informal settlements are like points of convergence in these sequences of movements, and nodes into the wider net of intra-places relations: some informal settlements are involved in turbulent flows, while others experience slower passages; sometimes they represent the ultimate destination of a life-journey, sometimes they only form provisional sites from which people then leave again. This view doesn't imply that it is not possible to trace sedentary people inside informal settlements but rather that, in contexts of informality, stability remains closely interwoven with mobility. The point here is that these discrete human movements, belonging to people's ordinary lives, appear like decisive vehicles of production, transformation and organization of informal settlements, and in turn they can become privileged observation points to better understand these places. Basing on a prismatic potential of the human mobility lens, the dissertation has the main purpose of contributing to a broader understanding of informal settlements, overcoming homologating visions, challenging preconceived images, as well as catching the vast spectrum of heterogeneity and complexity across and within these places. More particularly, it is orientated to build a fine-grained knowledge of informal settlements – concerning their functioning in the system of urban relations, their role within the migratory trajectories' dynamics, and their multiform human composition – in order to overcome a reductionist treatment of these places and to continue to calibrate upgrading approaches that move towards the improvement in the quality of life in these places. In doing so, the dissertation seeks to enrich the discussion around in-situ upgrading interventions, and puts some points of reflection on formal planning processes. The vast field of study introduced above is explored using case studies from the City of Johannesburg.