Securitized Geographies: Between Evictions and Surveillance in Cairo's Poor Urban Neighborhoods

ABSTRACT As Cairo's urban geography changes, how have securitization mechanisms shifted? Since the 2013 coup in Egypt, state mechanisms have suppressed mobilization in poor urban neighborhoods and facilitated evictions under the banner of urban redevelopment. In this paper, focusing on two of Cairo's poor urban neighborhoods, I analyze securitization through the lens of geographic transformation to show how urban redevelopment operates as a technology of securitization itself. I examine how the state police, in collaboration with the baltagiyya —a shadow policing network—helped shape these geographic transformations and intensify securitization. Drawing on ethnographic research in Bulaq Abule'lla and Old Cairo, I argue that evictions and urban redevelopment in Cairo have produced not only surveillance but also a highly securitized urban geography.