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Building on the understanding that the representations that underpin slum policies play an important role in the management and reproduction of informality, the aim of this paper is to identify some of the representations used in the governance of slums through two case studies: the upgrading policies of Rio de Janeiro's favelas , Brazil, and the governing of Stellenbosch's informal settlements, South Africa. Slum policies are influenced by the use of technologies, defined in this paper both as accounting techniques that stabilise the representations of informality and as technological artefacts used as means of intervention. Results show that the representations of slums used in the policies analysed contribute to the reproduction of informality by (i) representing slums as places of uncertainty and uncontrollability, (ii) affirming the need of experts and technical knowledge to correct the material, legal and knowledge deficits through which slums are represented, and (iii) focusing on the individual and household level and disregarding the relational character of poverty. These representations are influenced by sociotechnical imaginaries of sustainable and smart cities, through which the social orders that produce informality and social exclusion remain unquestioned. • Representations play an important role in the definition of informality as an object of governance. • Slums are represented through uncertainty, uncontrollability and deficit representations. • Representations are embedded in broad socio-technical imaginaries of sustainable and smart cities. • Critical scholarship on slum policy needs to be critical about its own use of representations of slums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]