Towards a relational-processual understanding of informal settlements in Saudi Arabia: informality, collectives, and urbanization

This thesis presents the first relational study of urban informality in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.
There are more than 60 informal areas in the city representing one-third of its land area and
housing more than 1.2 million residents. However, existing research on these neighbourhoods
has centred on the physical structure and built environment, while their social structure and
relations within them (and also with the outside) have remained largely unexplored. In
addressing this gap, the thesis synthesizes Norbert Elias's theory of "established-outsider"
relations and international literature on urban informality in understanding the complex,
ambivalent, and dynamic nature of these marginal spaces.
Using interviews and ethnographic observations in the Aljameaah neighbourhood, the findings
reveal how informal areas in Jeddah are characterized by diverse interdependent groups such
as tribal communities, long-standing and newly arrived immigrants, and undocumented
immigrants living together, sharing spaces and resources in an informal context. This diversity
and complex figuration of interdependencies serve as the foundation for understanding
Aljameaah: as a dynamic space of relations that is re-made alongside continuous urbanisation
processes, which transform and reconfigure it over time.
The central findings of the research and thesis can be summarized in three overlapping areas.
First, the specific history of informality in Aljameaah articulates the complex processes under
which its groups and communities develop over time and how members of the same group
identify with each other (and disidentify from others). A spatial relational-driven typology of
the "hara" (an Islamic concept referring to the immediately proximate community) is
formulated which can inform the interpretation of social relations and group differentiation in
Aljameaah. Second, the research captures the relational dynamics of Aljameaah, highlighting
how groups relate to "others" and how these relations are in flux over time and space. Tracing
group relations across different generations reveals the ambivalent collectives that are formed
between tribes, migrants and marginalized others, but also how the stigmatizing perceptions of
Aljameaah are also made symbolically in relation to other places. Third, the research addresses
the interdependence between urbanization and the making and re-making of the urban margins
in Jeddah. Sensitivity to longer-term urbanisation processes alongside analyses of
contemporary public policies reveals the way in which they impact on Aljameaah’s residents
and the scope for collective solidarities.