A new residential construction project and workers’ sheds in historic South Dhaka
March 2014 – March 2015
Melissa Fernandez is Senior Research Officer, along with PI Dr Sunil Kumar (Social Policy), on the ‘Urbanisation-Migration Nexus Project’, funded by DFID.
Summary
Asia’s urban population is predicted to double between the years 2000 and 2030. This presents policymakers, international development organisations and civil society with diverse and complex development challenges. Notwithstanding political differences in Asia and country-specific drivers underpinning these challenges, poverty, informal labour markets, housing, basic services and governance are often addressed in similar ways in the region as a whole. Moreover, policies and programmes, by and large, seem to address these challenges in isolation (for example, treating urbanisation and migration, housing and livelihoods as distinct and unrelated entities).
The Urbanisation Migration Nexus Project seeks to overcome this problem by exploring new economic, political, spatial and social relationships and outcomes generated as a result of the urbanisation-migration nexus in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. The project will also investigate how the working poor are negotiating these relationships in uncertain and potentially adverse urban environments.
The project conceptualises urbanisation and migration as a fluid dialectic: on the one hand, urban economic growth and consumption fuel a demand for labour and, on the other, declining and precarious rural livelihoods make labour vulnerable to new urban demands. It also identifies and researches a number of ‘new’ forces and forms supporting contemporary rural to urban as well as small-town to urban migration.
Inception Mission: 29 July to 16 August 2014
Melissa and Sunil travelled to India (Chennai), Bangladesh (Dhaka) and Nepal (Kathmandu) to meet and work with their project partners, visit project sites in each of the three cities and get together with DFID representatives in the relevant cities, as well as New Delhi.
Chennai:
Dhaka:
Kabul:
Lahore:
LSE London
Room POR 3.01
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Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
Tel: +44 (020) 7955 6522
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