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Slum Toponymy in Nairobi, Kenya: A Case Study Analysis of Kibera, Mathare and Mukuru </b

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Urban informality is a reality in cities of the Global South, including Sub-Saharan Africa, which has over half the urban population living in informal settlements (slums). Taking the case of three informal settlements in Nairobi (Kibera, Mathare and Mukuru) this study aimed to show how names play an important role as urban landscape symbols. The study analyses names of sub-settlements (villages) within the slums, their meanings and the socio-political processes behind them based on critical toponymic analysis. Data was collected from archival sources, focus group discussion and interviews, newspaper articles and online geographical sources. A qualitative analysis was applied on the village names and the results presented through tabulations, excerpts and maps. Categorisation of village names was done based on the themes derived from the data. The results revealed that village names represent the issues that slum residents go through including: social injustices of evictions and demolitions, poverty, poor environmental conditions, ethnic groupings among others. Each of the three cases investigated revealed a unique toponymic theme. Kibera’s names reflected a resilient Nubian heritage as well as a diverse ethnic composition. Mathare settlements reflected political struggles with a dominance of political pioneers in the village toponymy. Mukuru on the other hand, being the newest settlement, reflected a more global toponymy-with five large villages in the settlement having foreign names. Ultimately, the study revealed that ethnic heritage and politics, socio-economic inequalities and land injustices as well as globalization are the main factors that influence the toponymy of slums in Nairobi.
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... During the British colonization of Kenya, Africans were restricted from living in the built-up part of Nairobi, but workers who came from rural areas needed some form of temporary residence in the city, which led to the construction of makeshift shelters on unoccupied land. After independence, many more moved from rural areas into the city to work as restrictions were lifted, which caused the informal settlements to expand rapidly (Wanjiru and Matsubara, 2017). In this sense these settlements were always home to migrants, initially Kenyan rural-urban migrants and today increasingly to cross-border migrants including refugees, who turn to informal settlements because of low-cost housing as well as social connections (IOM, 2013;Muindi and Mberu, 2019). ...
... In this sense these settlements were always home to migrants, initially Kenyan rural-urban migrants and today increasingly to cross-border migrants including refugees, who turn to informal settlements because of low-cost housing as well as social connections (IOM, 2013;Muindi and Mberu, 2019). Mathare in particular is home to refugees and migrants from a number of countries, but a significant population of migrants from Uganda has given one of the villages within the settlement where many of them work the nickname Kampala (Wanjiru and Matsubara, 2017). Eastleigh is predominantly home to Somali refugees (Carrier, 2017). ...
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Chapter
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