Abstract
ABSTRACTResearch in Bangladesh reveals the limitations of actor‐oriented frameworks for understanding urban poverty that assess household livelihoods on the basis of a household's portfolio of assets or capitals. The narrow focus of these frameworks on households and their depoliticized definition of social capital overlook the political roots of urban poverty. The informal systems of governance that dominate resource distribution within low‐income settlements ensure that the social resources necessary for long‐term household improvement are confined to a small elite. Only through extending our analysis beyond the household level, to explore their position within this local political economy of employment and enterprise, can we recognize the limitations placed on household efforts to improve their livelihoods.
Highlights
Establishing the social and economic conditions and structural transformation that allows low-income rural societies to modernize, join the ranks of middle-income countries and facilitate declines in mortality and fertility rates (Satterthwaite 2002; Stren 2008; Clarke Annez and Buckley 2009; Skeldon 2010), urbanization is bringing new opportunities for employment, education, services, and infrastructure to billions of people across the Global South
When we look at asset-based frameworks for urban poverty we see why they are so restricted in their ability to capture the critical importance of this local political economy
In its attempts to reconcile the relative roles of household agency and broader structural constraints in influencing opportunities for household improvements among Dhaka’s urban poor, these findings highlight that our understanding of urban poverty – and our attempts to overcome it – must move beyond a narrow focus on assets to incorporate the structural obstacles to mobility that face the urban poor at the household and community level
Summary
Establishing the social and economic conditions and structural transformation that allows low-income rural societies to modernize, join the ranks of middle-income countries and facilitate declines in mortality and fertility rates (Satterthwaite 2002; Stren 2008; Clarke Annez and Buckley 2009; Skeldon 2010), urbanization is bringing new opportunities for employment, education, services, and infrastructure to billions of people across the Global South. The creation of critical power hierarchies and struggles over inclusion and exclusion from access to resources and opportunities that emerges (Geiser et al 2011) lead to structural obstacles that place severe and often insurmountable constraints on the agency of the urban poor, as this research illustrates in the context of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital city This reinforces the limitations to traditional householdfocused and asset-based frameworks for understanding urban poverty and livelihoods (as discussed ), and highlights the need for a broader conceptualization that recognizes the political economy of urban poverty and its implications on prospects for poverty reduction
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