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Paper short abstract

Based on long-term fieldwork in a Dhaka slum, this paper demonstrates how COVID-19 exacerbated everyday precarity, eroding well-being beyond the loss of income. It argues that survival alone is not living, and that development policy must centre dignity, capability, and lived experience.

Paper long abstract

Contemporary poverty debates in Bangladesh, as in many low- and middle-income countries, remain dominated by income-based metrics and technocratic policy prescriptions that inadequately capture lived experiences of deprivation and wellbeing. The study examines how low-income residents of urban slums understand and negotiate wellbeing in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research is based on long-term qualitative fieldwork conducted in Karail, one of Dhaka’s largest urban slums, and draws on 30 in-depth interviews.

The findings show that the pandemic did not merely deepen material poverty but significantly eroded core capabilities, including securing livelihoods, bodily health, dignity, and aspirations. Participants’ narratives reveal how everyday wellbeing is shaped by uncertainty, informal labour regimes, and fragile social protections—conditions that are seen as the normalisation of insecurity. At the same time, residents articulated expectations of the state, employers, and society, invoking a morality of care, fairness, and reciprocal obligation that contrasts sharply with dominant development discourses.

By foregrounding the voices of the urban poor, the study advances the argument that well-being must be understood as relational, experiential, and politically situated, rather than as an aggregate outcome of economic indicators. The paper contributes to broader debates on reimagining development by demonstrating how centring lived experience can offer alternative paradigms for social justice, grounded in dignity, participation, and capability expansion. The study concludes by outlining implications for post-pandemic poverty policy in Bangladesh, emphasising the need for inclusive, evidence-based approaches that place wellbeing at the core of development practice.