It is not that common for monographic studies of informal settlements to strike such an elegant balance between the theoretical propositions that help us to understand better the experience of slum dwellers; the contextualization and analysis of urban policy connected not to ‘universal principles’ or ‘one-size-fits all best practices’ but to specific social and political circumstances; and the voice, ideas and anxieties of those better qualified to illuminate what goes on in the infra-city, slum dwellers, as Ayona Datta's The Illegal City does. Based on ethnographic fieldwork she undertook in 2002 and 2005 with research assistant Ritu Mishra in a medium-size squatter settlement in Delhi pending resettlement – a jhuggi jhopri colony, the category for land squatting slums in the city (the other being ‘slum designated areas’, ‘resettlement colonies’ and ‘regularized-unauthorized colonies’, p. 6) – Datta sets out to investigate the population's everyday encounters and negotiations with the law, with a particular focus on the gendered re-working of their status, identities and practices as illegal citizens.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first one, she carefully contextualizes the case within Delhi's history of squatter settlements. Using insights from key thinkers on the force of law (Walter Benjamin), the differences between law and justice (Jacques Derrida) and legal spaces of exception (Giorgio Agamben), Datta isolates illegality from informality to argue that the former is the operative element in the case of Delhi squatters’ political bargaining with the state, NGOs and other entities of power. The continuously shifting condition of squatters as legal or illegal subjects, as well as of their built environments as legal or illegal slums, is something performed in everyday interactions yet framed by broader entitlement claims related to individual identities (of being low caste or a woman, for instance). This sets up a permanent state of anxiety, and individuals shift between wanting to be recognized by law as a means to resettlement, on the one hand; and noting that law and judicial decisions have been used by the middle classes to initiate processes of clearance of their houses and thus rejecting it, on the other. Particularly interesting in this part is Chapter 3, where Datta describes the relation between broad political circumstances and the rendering of squatters as legitimate citizens – for instance the Emergency period in 1975–77, with personalized promises of resettlement by Indira Gandhi; or V.J. Singh's political patronage of low caste and OBC (Other Backward Classes) populations in 1989, which included issuing identity cards to squatters – but also its reflux, as was the case of the ‘judicial turn’ in the 2000s, with the legal figure of Public Interest Litigation becoming an instrument of slum clearance in the name of ‘clean’ urban environments for the middle-class citizen and attaining global city status.

In the second part of the book, Datta makes the path from context to lived experience. She fleshes out the everyday and shows the way gender and age are performed and negotiated in the time-consuming tasks connected to the absence of infrastructure: young women are the ones who wait in queue for water; male children the ones who climb on water tankers; women in general the ones who suffer most from the fear of being raped while using the urban forest next to the settlement to defecate. The voices of interviewees show that participation in women's activities is a contested process, which may originate from very prosaic desires – such as resident Abida's statement that she was first attracted to the activities of a feminist NGO because they sang and danced (p. 91) – but is ultimately framed by broader development agendas set up by the UN and re-worked by feminist scholarship on women's strategic needs, and that it exists in a space of tension between middle- and working-class feminisms. Similarly, Datta shows us that the fascination of academics like Arjun Appadurai with the ‘technologies of the poor’ such as pay-per-use toilet complexes has to be moderated with the acknowledgement that such solutions have turned the basic human rights of privacy and hygiene into a commodity (p. 130). This situation partly explains why the internalization of legal and hygienist discourses by squatters is not a result of shame or illiteracy but rather a part of a politics of entitlement to decent housing. But stances may shift again, at any time: in Chapter 7, we see that the anxiety with the pending annihilation of their dwellings leads women to an un-feminist ‘rejection of the law’ and to the acceptance of traditional oppression in the space of home.

This is an unassuming yet wonderful book, with very few flaws. Datta's iterative style of writing is accomplished and places each chapter's focused discussion within the broader urban history. My only two criticisms are that in a straight read reiteration slows down some of the arguments, and on occasion leads to what in my opinion is over-analysis. An example concerns her description of events related to Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984 by her Sikh bodyguard and the violence and thousands of murders that followed. During that period, the settlement became a safe haven for many Sikhs, with residents preventing outsiders from entering it, in a courageous gesture of solidarity between marginalized populations. Datta, however, connects these admirable acts to her discussion on ideas of the camp (as the settlement is called) as a big family: ‘This patriarchy of the family extended to a patronage and protection of minorities within the camp, because minorities were seen not as outsiders; rather as part of a wider family with whom home in the city was shared’ (p. 171). I disagree with her suggestion that solidarity between marginalized groups is first and foremost rooted in patriarchy, and especially with the use of such an exceptional event to illustrate it. In my opinion, a more careful political analysis would be needed for this particular episode.

However, these are small matters when compared with the book's qualities. The most important one is the delicate way it dissects metropolitan India's legal and judicial frameworks on slums, urban environments and urban citizenship – gone totally middle class in the past 15 years, so to speak – and re-aligns the hierarchy of priorities without being prescriptive, almost by suggestion. This is a relevant contribution for the academic community, but even more for the policy makers, legal agents and officials the first part of the book focuses on. One wishes they will read this book, as they would learn much from it. It is now the publisher's job to be persistent and make sure they and the rest of Delhi's urban elite do.