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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how residents in high-density and low-income urban settings in Bangladesh experience formal and informal support in a context of permanent precarity. Findings point to a balancing act between short-term gain vis-à-vis long-term cost and practical versus strategic needs.

Paper long abstract

Life in high-density and low-income urban settings in Bangladesh constitutes a state of permanent precarity. Insecure housing, high levels of informality, poor infrastructure and environmental hazards lead to a context where uncertainty is rule rather than exception. It requires residents to engage in the constant act of navigating the forms of support that might be available to them – from formal social protection schemes to community-based mechanisms and international remittances – and negotiating access to them. Doing so comes with trade-offs between short-term gain vis-à-vis long-term cost, practical versus strategic needs, and social vis-à-vis economic benefits.

This paper explores how residents in urban Bangladesh access and experience formal and informal support in coping with permanent precarity. It does so based on two research projects that took place across two neighbourhoods in Dhaka and one neighbourhood in Chattogram between 2020 and 2023, pulling together primary quantitative and qualitative data about the types of support that residents accessed, their reasons for doing so, and the self-reported impacts of such support.

Findings point to (i) continued reliance on longstanding forms of informal support within family networks – including to the village of origin, and the importance of adhering to social norms to maintain access to those, (ii) reluctance to request support from friends or community members, especially when doing so undermines social expectations, and (iii) the two-edged sword of formal social protection in terms of offering rights-based and stigma-free support in theory but causing shame and embarrassment through its delivery in practice.