Livelihoods Limitations: The Political Economy of Urban Poverty in Bangladesh

Abstract

Frameworks for understanding urban poverty have taken an asset-based approach that assesses livelihoods strategies on the basis of a household's portfolio of assets. Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh reveals the limitations of such approaches. Their narrow focus on households and depoliticized definition of social capital may capture experiences of urban poverty, but cannot reconcile these with the significance of the structural drivers of urban poverty. Our understanding of urban poverty must recognize the informal systems of governance that dominate resource distribution at the community-level and keep the resources necessary for household improvement confined to a relatively small elite. Excluded from the accumulation networks that provide a platform for household mobility for the well-connected, most urban poor households are reliant upon survival networks in their search for security. Only through extending our analysis beyond the household to explore their position within this local political economy can we recognize the significant limitations placed on their efforts to extend and improve their livelihoods.

The Decline of Gangsters and Politicization of Violence in Urban Bangladesh

“…In the context of a slum in Chittagong, Suykens (: 496) writes that the ‘line between being a mastaan, a jomidar or a community leader was sometimes thin and blurred’. Building on this comment, Banks (: 278) describes some leaders in Dhaka's slums as being mastan, others as having been so in the past, while some as not being mastan at all. Indeed, although Hossain (, ) and Hackenbroch and Hossain () briefly reference the mastan as significant in Dhaka's slums, it is actually the explicitly party political nature of local power that these studies highlight.…”

Urban Informality as a Site of Critical Analysis

“…In some instances, informal politics is accepted and recognised as instrumental to the operation of formal political outcomes, rather than an aberration to be absorbed into the formal. In others, a critical literature highlights the anti-poor outcomes from informal politics and intermediation, such as clientelist relations (Banks, 2016). Clearly, here, we need a broader understanding of urban informality that captures how similar economic, spatial, and political processes can lead to such different outcomes for different groups.…”

“…The mediation of statecitizen relationships in informal spaces by informal community leaders, service providers, or 'mafia groups' (amongst others) who have a vested interest in protecting their informal strategies of extraction and accumulation, often prevents more disadvantaged populations from addressing their needs and interests or securing improved citizenship rights. In the context of Dhaka's informal settlements, Banks (2016) highlights the difference between residents with accumulation networks and those with survival networks in terms of opportunities for advancement and 'getting ahead'. Those benefiting from accumulation strategies do so through acting as brokers, managing relations between state and society, and between formal and informal.…”