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Table of Contents -- Series page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Dedication -- Figures -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Defining the Urban -- Defining the Contours of an Alternative Field of Urban Political Studies -- Organization of the Book -- Notes -- 1: Where are the Global Urban Politics? -- Where are the Urban Politics? From Municipalism to a New Political Ontology -- Where are Politics? Urban Life is Political Life -- Where is the Global in Urban Politics? Uneven Connections and Power Relations -- Informalization of the State -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 2: Global Urban Social Movements -- What are Global Urban Social Movements? -- Why and How Do We Become Politically Engaged? Discordant Moments, Mobility Practices and Continuity with Everyday Life -- Emerging Forms of Urban Political Mobilization -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 3: Global Diversity Politics -- Cities as 'Difference Machines': From Managing Diversity In Cities to Difference as Constitutive of Urbanity -- The Routes of Undocumented Immigrants, The Neighbour and the Identity Card -- The Smuggling Routes of Socio-Economic Crisis, Patriarchy and Urbanity -- Rethinking Citizenship -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 4: Global Environmental Politics -- Local Environmental Conflicts: Engaging Various Conceptions of Time -- Global Environmental Politics: Articulating Metabolic Flows at Various Speeds and Scales -- A Changing Conception of Time Affecting the Political Process -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 5: Global Urban Security Politics -- Urban Nightmares: Home Security and Alien Invasions -- Affective Micro-Politics and Re-emerging Forms of Political Action -- Conclusion -- Note -- Global Urban Politics and the Informalization of the State -- Critical Urban Studies: Pragmatism between Postcolonialism and Structuralism

In this short comment on Beveridge and Koch's intervention on radical democracy and urbanization, I wish to take their idea of democratic engagement and push it towards epistemological reflections. Democratic engagement is a form of anticipation of urban futures – futures characterized by caring democracy. Adjusting our analytical lens to better see these everyday practices requires rebalancing critical versus generative epistemologies.

AbstractThis essay is based on long‐term ethnographic research in Mexico City, and centers on a street epistemology that involves researchers immersing themselves in material street life to explore the relationships between the body, the house and the street in the constant repair of the (future) city. I assert that Mexico City is not a city dominated by planners, experts, or professional social workers, but rather a place where everyone knows that perfection is elusive and that constant repair of oneself, the city and the objects that constitute daily life make life possible here. The city is permanently under construction—populated by workers who destroy and rebuild, and by repairers of all kinds: roadside mechanics, nurses who check your blood pressure and offer flu vaccinations in the subway, herbalists who sell their medicines on the sidewalks, 'bone setters' who offer osteopathy services on the street, improvised pharmacies, used car part sellers, anti‐flu juices producers, and cabinets for intercession with angels. In the 'city of repair' different yet interdependent futures are practiced. There is the future imagined and constructed by professionals seeking perfectibility and manifestations of aspirational politics. There is also the future imagined and practiced by the vast majority of urban dwellers—a pragmatic future grounded in the 'here and now' of constant repair and in the constant search for solutions to contingencies—an anticipatory political form.

AbstractThe project of globalizing informality requires the circulation of concepts and theories from the 'South' to the 'North'. It also relies on intertextuality and exchanges across languages and sites of academic production. This essay is a reaction to the collection of papers presented in this forum. It argues for more academic conversations between languages and cities in order to contribute to a general state theory.

AbstractThis article identifies traces of the state in three urban neighborhoods of Mexico City. Instead of asking what is the state, where is it located or what does it do, the question posed here is: what are the effects of state practices at the street level? By ethnographically and visually describing how protection is performed, the article argues that the state is not only 'somewhere' in specific functions, actors or institutions; it also manifests materialized effects produced by a web of conflict‐ridden relations. Discussion about the state in the global South generally revolves around its failures and informality. The proposal here is that, by analyzing the state from the standpoint of urban space, the focus is on how protection is performed and by means of which operations, relations, objects and actors—not whether the state works or not, or whether actors are formal or informal. Based on ongoing ethnographic work and a collaboration with two visual artists in Mexico City, the article analyzes three protective processes: the 'muscles' (involving actors including police officers, gang leaders, fathers and husbands), the 'saint' (involving caring for representations of various saints and participation in other clientelistic chains of fidelity) and the 'amparo' (a form of application of the rule of law in a personalized manner for the redress of interpersonal conflicts). These are three sets of practices that have been embedded in Mexico's history of state formation since the days of colonization.

À travers une étude critique du débat québécois sur les gangs de rue, actuellement structuré par un cadre d'intervention axé sur la catégorisation des jeunes « à risque » d'être recrutés par les gangs, cet article explore le rapport des jeunes (liés ou non aux gangs) à l'État. Dans un premier temps, le texte se penche sur la construction sociale de la menace attribuée aux gangs de rue afin de mettre au jour les logiques d'action qui sous-tendent les activités des gangs de rue comme celles des programmes de prévention. Par la comparaison de ces logiques d'action que nous qualifions d'urbaine pour les jeunes et les gangs de rue et d'actuarielle pour les programmes de prévention, le texte suggère que les programmes de prévention en place ont un triple effet : stigmatisation, dépolitisation et moralisation. L'analyse de ces effets conduit, dans un troisième temps, à des réflexions plus théoriques sur la notion de citoyenneté (urbaine) et sa pertinence pour comprendre le rapport que les jeunes qui évoluent dans des milieux illicites ont avec l'État. En conclusion, le texte considère la notion d'informalité et pose une question qui demeure ouverte : est-ce que la notion de citoyenneté peut s'accommoder du mode informel de rapport à l'État que l'on retrouve chez ces jeunes et bien d'autres citadins ? ===== Based on a critical analysis of the public debate on street gangs in Quebec, which is currently structured by preventive actions geared towards "at-risk" youth, this paper explores the relationship that youth construct with the State. Firstly, the article analyses the social construction of the threat attributed to street gangs in order to reveal the underlying logics of gang activities as much as of preventive programs. By comparing these two logics of action which are called "urban" for youth and street gangs and "actuarial" for preventive programs, the paper suggests that preventive measures in Montreal have a threefold effect: stigmatisation, depoliticisation, and moralisation. The analysis of these effects leads in the third part of the paper to theoretical reflections on the notion of (urban) citizenship and its relevance for understanding the relationship that youth using illicit vectors construct with the State. The paper concludes with an exploration of the notion of informality and asks an open question: Can the notion of citizenship accommodate the informal mode of relation that youth and many other urban dwellers develop with the State?

Pourquoi le « territoire » est-il devenu si important dans la redéfinition des politiques sociales aux États-Unis ? Alors que les travaux sur la territorialisation des politiques publiques et sur le rescaling prennent l'État comme point de départ, l'auteure prend ici le parti d'explorer la relation entre mobilisation sociopolitique et État. L'exemple de Los Angeles montre que l'incommensurabilité entre le territoire vécu et le territoire institutionnel engendre des stratégies de mobilisation territorialisées (par exemple la sécession) qui à leur tour provoquent la (re)territorialisation des politiques sociales. Cette confrontation entre territoire vécu et territoire institutionnel résulte d'une réaction aux nouvelles tensions urbaines créées par l'intensification de l'immigration et par les restructurations économiques.