Urban modernisation from the door of a minibus in Yopougon (Abidjan). The effects of the new infrastructural order on city life

This paper examines the impact of the emergence of a new infrastructural order on urban life trajectories related to the artisanal transport sector in Abidjan. It aims to understand what it means to restructure a set of actors and places that together constitute more than an economic sector or an urban service, but a milieu for anchoring and circulating precarious lives in the city. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s metaphor of the “milieu”, this article aims to examine a government technique that consists of intervening in a given space in order to influence existing flows (of norms, people and objects). This approach raises two research questions: under what conditions does an institutional norm compete with, influence or invisibilise an existing set of norms within a milieu? What do we influence remotely, what balances do we risk upsetting, what do we leave out and at what scale when a new infrastructural order interferes with an existing milieu? To answer these questions, we conducted qualitative fieldwork in April 2023, focusing on a gbaka (minibus) line in Yopougon, one of Abidjan’s popular neighborhoods. Since January 2022, AMUGA has been experimenting with the introduction of minute stops on this line in order to put an end to what are considered disorderly practices in preparation for the arrival of the Yopougon-Bingerville Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). The changes underway make this line a distinctive observatory of an attempt at remote government when a new order intrudes into an environment.