Fijian infrastructural citizenship: spaces of electricity sharing and informal power grids in an informal settlement

Infrastructure has historically been absent in informal settlements in Oceania. Oceanic governments have deliberately withheld infrastructure to these settlements denying them essential resources, human rights, and ways of life. Current reforms in urban policy seek to rectify this record by promising more inclusive infrastructures. In this article, I investigate the effect a promised electricity infrastructure had in an informal settlement in Suva, Fiji. Prior to development, residents created their own infrastructures that equitably shared electricity in spaces of electricity sharing. The initiation of infrastructural works destroyed this local infrastructure embedded in local social relations. While residents waited for this promised infrastructure to be constructed, they erected informal power grids that mimicked the exclusive and commoditised provision of electricity of the planned infrastructure. I argue that the promise of infrastructural development in informal settlements in Oceania is reshaping previously inclusive forms infrastructural citizenship in favour of more exclusive infrastructural relationships.