Uncertain Properties

Uncertain properties refers to property not secured by the legal apparatus of the state, such as informal settlements, indigenous lands, refugee camps, etc. It integrates my previous work on Morocco and Tunisia with the Palestinian tradition of understanding dispossession within the overall context of property conflict. This concept intends to provide an analytical framework for mapping and historicizing the emergence of various uncertain property forms in (post)colonial societies. Toward this objective, I propose reconsidering the discussion on the role of colonialism in shaping the relationship between state and society in light of dispossessed people’s experiences. It is imperative that we rethink the way colonial policies continue to dispossess countless communities that do not fit within modern definitions of property. The vulnerability of modern property rights regimes shapes (post)colonial state formation and creates a cycle of protests by dispossessed communities.

The conflict between modern (postcolonial) state legislation and the customary laws of local communities, for example, relating to the management of collective or common land (terres collectives), has been discussed in several accounts (Eddouada 2021). These accounts highlighted how the modernization of legislation has often been utilized as a tool to legitimize the appropriation of wealth of these communities (Kapoor 2017). These analyses, however, neglected the emergence of informal law within urban margins by focusing primarily on rural areas (Sauer 2012). If during the colonial period, the tribal organizational system was destructured and delegitimized (Aboulkacem et al. 2018), today, more than fifty years after decolonization and the formation of the postcolonial state, struggles for property are no longer limited to tribal areas (Bhandar 2018). Indeed, rural exodus and intensive urban growth have created new areas of political uncertainty in which a fierce struggle for “the right to possess” is raging. All of this is taking place in urban informality spaces (Roy 2011). It is my intention to demonstrate how uncertainty is political in itself, in a postcolonial or colonial context, by revealing the systemic links between these new spaces of informal law within the margin and the historical process of delegitimizing rural customary law. To analyze and understand these reconfigurations, it is vital to focus on the forms of state opposition and resistance that organize themselves in the world of informality/uncertainty.

It is particularly important to note that when it comes to property rights, women are placed in a position of uncertainty by the state, since their rights are not legally protected. As women face greater challenges claiming their rights to land and other property, they are disproportionately affected by holding only “uncertain properties,” perpetuating gender inequalities and placing them at greater risk of poverty and exploitation. My fieldwork in Morocco has demonstrated how tribal women are always excluded from inheriting property rights. Many cases illustrate how local authorities discriminate against women in their access to land by using “old customary rules.” In fact, women have been deprived of inheritance rights on tribal land for a long time in Morocco. This is a longstanding struggle between tribal women and the state. 

The soulaliyate women’s movement for the right to inheritance of collective land began in 2007 in a period during which collective land was rapidly privatized. Since the 1990s, tribal lands have been used as a reserve for rapid urban expansion and large-scale construction projects (Berriane and Ait Mouss 2016). The lease of tribal land from the state to private investors has led to an increase in the number of eviction procedures. Moreover, these land evictions forced women to learn new negotiation tools to settle their right to compensation and re-housing. However, women on tribal lands were excluded, under customary law transcribed by the colonial power, from any right to compensation. Therefore, they could not claim to be included in the list of “beneficiaries” for compensation in the event of an eviction. Thus, in order to claim their right to compensation and re-housing, i.e. to increase the base of beneficiaries of the “entitled beneficiaries” to land, women of tribal lands mobilized to demand their right to compensation and re-housing. It was through the mobilization of the soulaliyate movement that a change in the law was enacted: tribal women now have a legal right to compensation in the event that their collective land is privatized. However, this new law is rarely enforced. 

In the fieldwork I conducted with the Guich Oudaya tribe in Rabat in 2014, I discovered that during the various negotiations between the tribe and the State between 2005 and 2011, one point of negotiation remained unresolved: that of the guichiya woman married to a guichi. The land estate is calculated in this case based on the husband’s rights in accordance with customary law, so the guichiya woman does not receive the inheritance and is not compensated by her parents. Furthermore, after the 2014 demolitions, even the children of a guichiya mother were excluded from compensation and rehousing. During 2014, the authorities destroyed the homes of the children of a guichiya mother without providing them with the opportunity to rehouse themselves. The inhabitants found themselves in front of a legal imbroglio that is almost indecipherable. Indeed, the criteria used to define the beneficiaries’ base seem to have shifted to finally reach a threshold of absurdity that no interpretation of the law can unravel. This muddle of criteria, which leads to case-by-case treatment, has ended up creating inextricable human situations that the women describe as pure injustice:

My mother-in-law is bent lbled (a member of the community). The compensation only came out in her name. But how will her children and her husband be able to share the lot? In whose pocket the compensation will go (...) 11 people are attached to my mother-in-law’s lot. If they sell the lot, how much will they get back? Not even enough to rent for a whole year... (Habiba, resident of Douar Ouled Dlim, April 2014).