The social implications of urban displacement A Case of former Kipawa Residents displaced to Pugu, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

This study explores the social implications of urban displacement. The study involved two settings, namely Kipawa and Pugu settlements. The study wanted to find out why large scale investments that aim to improve economic development and social well-being of people may result into economic marginalization, displacement and poverty of the intended target groups. To accomplish this task the study employed qualitative research methodology, through the use of IDI’s, FGD, observation, and documentary reviews. The findings of the study reveal that large scale investments if not properly managed and organized results into urban displacement which has negative consequences to the displaced people socially and economically. The displaced people undergo traumatic experiences resulting from their removal from sources of income, social insecurity, and access to food, shelter, health and subjected to impoverishment, marginalization, joblessness and even death. In order to cope with these problems people adopted a wide range of coping mechanisms such as forming new social networks and doing non-entrepreneurial activities. The study concludes that people’s displacement is definitely an expression of the process of accumulation by dispossession which operates in disarticulated and distorted peripheral capitalist setting which is dominant in Tanzania. Lastly, the study recommends that politicians, intellectuals and researchers should generate guidelines, through basic research so as to unearth the perverted accumulation which results into deterioration of life conditions of the majority of displaced people.