Land, Livelihood, and Liminality: Interrogating Informal Settlement on the UP Diliman Campus

DSD Lecture Series Presents:
Land, Livelihood, and Liminality: Interrogating Informal Settlement on the UP Diliman Campus

Everyone is invited to the lecture of Dr. Redento B. Recio on 23 May 2025, 5:30 PM at the Bulwagang Tandang Sora, UP CSWCD!

The event is in partnership with SD 303-304 Class, 2nd Semester, AY 24-25.

See you there!

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[Abstract]
Who belongs in the university? This presentation offers a grounded, preliminary investigation into the informal settlements within the UP Diliman campus. It unpacks the often-overlooked presence of informal settler communities composed of university staff, students, workers, migrants, and their families—groups whose everyday labor and lives are deeply entangled in the university’s daily operations and spatial development. These communities provide vital yet undervalued services: low-cost housing, cheap labor, affordable transport, and retail support to the university and its neighboring districts.

The presentation examines the spatial conditions, opportunities, enduring challenges, and uncertain futures faced by these communities. It also narrates how residents navigate their precarious condition through grassroots organizing, rights-claiming, and solidarity-based practices that challenge exclusionary ideas about belonging in a public university. In engaging with multidimensional issues of tenure insecurity, livelihood precarity, and housing rights, the discussion calls for a reimagining of campus governance—one that foregrounds equity, social inclusion, and the broader social responsibilities of UP as the country’s national university.

The presentation ends with a provocation on the wider implications of engaging with informal settlement for grounded theorizing and for advancing emancipatory practices in urban social development.

Source: College of Social Work and Community Development Facebook