Manufacturing ownership rights in practice: Property dynamics in an urban poor settlement in Mumbai—The exemplary case of Dharavi

Abstract This paper presents a case study of Dharavi, an urban poor settlement in Mumbai, often called Asia’s largest slum. It seeks to understand the ownership of urban property through an empirical—anthropological and sociological—study asking how various socially disadvantaged groups “do” property on the ground and try to thicken their claims on tenements and land. Advancing the analytics of legal pluralism, the paper shows how different legal registers of property interact in property conflicts over urban renewal and exposes their hybrid character. Refining the formal/informal binarity, the article shows how legal dimensions are woven into the livelihood strategies of urban poor and are reshaped in their everyday struggles for recognition as legitimate urban citizens who try to strengthen their right to the city.