Illegal geographies of the state: the legalisation of a “squatter” settlement in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

• Author: Craig Hatcher
• Position: Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
• Pages: 39-54

Illegal geographies of the state:

the legalisation of a “squatter”

settlement in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Craig Hatcher

Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to problematise the relation between “legality” and the state, through a

case study analysis of law at work within the built environment. In doing so, the paper argues that

studies on law and geography should consider the broader processes of state “law making” to

understand the production of illegal space.

Design/methodology/approach – The liminal boundary of illegal/legal and its relation with the

state is developed through a case study on the legalisation process of a “squatter” settlement located on

the outskirts of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The paper draws on primary qualitative research

(semi-structured interviews) and legal analysis undertaken in Kyrgyzstan at various times over seven

months between 2011 and 2013.

Findings – Examining law as static and pre-existing is problematic in developing an understanding of

the production of illegal and legal spaces within the built environment. An emphasis on law-making and

the process of legalisation draws attention to the different groups, practices and policies involved and

reframes the relation between the state and legality.

Originality/value – Using a case study anchoring the analysis within law’s constitutive and

contested presence within the built environment, the paper addresses a theoretical and empirical

panacea in legal geography by unpacking the “legal” with reference to its plurality internally within the

state. Moreover, studies on law and geography have tended to focus on European or North American

contexts, whereas this paper draws on data from Central Asia.

Keywords State, Legal geography, Illegality, Kyrgyzstan, Law and space, Squatter settlement

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction: The state and processes of legality

On 8 August 2011, a group of over a hundred protestors gathered on the outskirts of

Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, and began to block the main road connecting the

central part of the city to the Dordoy Bazaar, a market and major trading centre for the

Central Asia region. The protestors were all residents from Ak Jar, a nearby “illegal”

settlement located just outside the city’s municipal boundary, and home to largely

internal migrants from other provinces of the country. This was the second time in less

The author wishes to thank Rony Emmenegger and Susan Thieme as well as the three anonymous

reviewers. The author is also particularly grateful for the critical feedback received from the

editors of this special issue, Luke Bennett and Antonia Layard. Additionally, the author thanks

Ainura Asamidinova, Jazgul Kochkorova, Mavluda Kodirova, Emil Nasritdinov and Nazira

Zholdoshbekova for all their kind help and assistance in Kyrgyzstan. The research for this

publication was conducted within the framework of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in

Research (NCCR) North-South.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/1756-1450.htm

Illegal

geographies

39

Received 23 January 2014

Revised 11 September 2014

12 October 2014

16 October 2014

Accepted 17 October 2014

InternationalJournal of Law in the

BuiltEnvironment

Vol.7 No. 1, 2015

pp.39-54

©Emerald Group Publishing Limited

1756-1450

DOI 10.1108/IJLBE-01-2014-0004

than a year that the residents had protested by blocking the road. During the rst

protest, the residents demanded legalisation of the settlement as well as electricity and

water (Osmongazieva, 2010). This time, during interviews with the local press, the

residents emphasised that they would continue to protest until the Prime Minister

Atambayev agreed to meet with them to discuss the living conditions of the settlement

(Podolskaya, 2011). As the settlement was “illegal”, the majority of its self-built houses

were not connected to the city’s electricity grid and, with no water connection, the

residents had to purchase expensive bottled water delivered to the settlement by a

private company. During the second day of protests, and with a presidential election

looming in which Atambayev was a candidate, a group of residents were eventually

invited to attend the White House, the parliament building in Bishkek, for a private

meeting with the Prime Minister and several other government ofcials. The

negotiations ended successfully for the residents. Atambayev visited the settlement a

few days later and, again, shortly before the presidential election in October 2011 where,

during a speech to the local press at the settlement, he promised to improve the living

conditions. Atambayev won the election to become the president of Kyrgyzstan and, in

keeping his promise, ensured funds from the federal budget were set aside for

infrastructural improvement works, which began at the settlement by the end of 2011.

Although the residents protesting on the edge of Bishkek in August 2011 were from

an “illegal” settlement, the account above aims to emphasise how, following a series of

protests and discussions, the state began to answer to their demands. This raises

questions that form the themes of this article: why did the “state” become involved with

an “illegal” settlement? And, how does the gradual involvement of the state, over time,

shift and unpack the meaning of “illegality” and “legality” to reveal a contingent,

processual ux rather than a spatially static and legally xed conceptualisation of the

Ak Jar settlement, which becomes reied and enduring. As Cooper (1996) notes,

examining the production of illegality challenges the notion that laws are

unambiguously enacted by states. Instead, a “symbiotic relationship” exists between

state and illegal practices and, especially, the “varied actors inside and around states

[that] manoeuvre actual legality and illegality in complex ways” (Heyman and Smart,

1999, p. 11). Moreover, rather than understanding “legal” or “illegal” as reied

end-products, examining legalisation, or illegalisation, as a process “challenges us to ask

how a particular set of classications, justications, and enforcement practices are

originated, put in place, and reproduced or changed over time” (Heyman, 2013, p. 304).

In contributing to the legal geography canon, this article advocates an examination of

the internal heterogeneity of the “state” in relation to law-making practices. While legal

pluralism addresses the possibility of legal orders beyond the “state” existing “with

different foundations of legitimacy, validity, power and authority” (Benda-Beckman

and Benda-Beckman, 2014, Chapter 1), it is emphasised that within this “polycentric

legal world, the centrality of state law, though increasingly shaken, is still a decisive

political factor” (Santos, 2002, p. 473). This centrality of state law, however, is seen as

increasingly fragmented and internally pluralised (Santos, 2002) once meanings of the

state as a “single agent” acting “above” society (Ferguson and Gupta, 2002) are

challenged to emphasise “disaggregated” notions of power divided between “state” and

“non-state” individuals and institutions (Sharma and Gupta, 2006). The article aims to

demonstrate these notions of the disaggregated legal authority of the state through the

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