Eternal Slumber and (Im)Permanent Dwellers: Intersectional Informality in a Metro Manila Cemetery

Date of Award

5-1-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts major in Sociology

First Advisor

Enrique Niño P. Leviste, PhD

Abstract

The Manila North Cemetery has been a site of urban informal living since the 1950s. The number of residents has expanded owing to the generational dimension of cemetery dwelling and migration from the countryside. In a wider sphere, forms of urban informality are a constant feature of cities in the Global South, and ranges from squatting to undocumented economic activities to survive in the Metropolis. These activities often run against, and circumvents, state logic and procedures and have been usual subjects of legal proscription. But despite the persistence of cemetery dwelling, there has been limited investigation on it as a means of generating one’s space in the city and how it subverts how urban spaces are governed.

This study looks at the actions, strategies, and assertions of cemetery dwellers in defending the gains from informality through quiet and bold forms of encroachment. The concept of encroachment brings the understanding of urban informality from a means of survival to a process by which urban informals secure, expand, and negotiate their interests. The idea that encroachment takes quiet and bold forms also differentiates the individual, protracted and pervasive action from organized, collective action observed in informal settlements. Finally, this processual understanding in the context of the Manila North Cemetery brings the analysis of informality from an understanding it as standalone instances to an intersection of informal activities directed at generating (im)permanence in the urban space.

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