Five ideas constitute the central message of this study. First, urban rickshaw pullers come from a very poor economic background consistent with the characteristics of chronic poverty. Second, rickshaw pulling provides a route of modest upward mobility for those among the rural chronically poor...

The aim of this paper is to document and explain the changing nature of urban poverty in East Africa since 1970, in particular in the two cities of Kampala and Nairobi. It will argue that the concept of proleterianization is helpful in understanding the changes in urban poverty and politics

This paper summarises the recent quantitative and qualitative evidence on urban poverty in Ethiopia. The analysis of poverty dynamics is difficult and has been neglected, hence most of the studies reviewed here focus on urban poverty at a particular point in time. The paper also attempts to...

This paper develops a series of arguments regarding the contribution of social movements to the reduction of chronic poverty in both urban and rural social contexts, building on the more specific arguments developed in CPRC Working Papers Nos. 63 and 64). This short, more analytically oriented...

In recognizing that poverty is 'multi-dimensional,' contemporary policy discourses – drawing on scholarship on ‘networks,’ ‘exclusion,’ and ‘culture’ – have made important (if often underappreciated) steps to incorporate insights from social and political theory, but these...

This paper examines the fracture points, or areas of weakness and failure, in social policy formation - from agenda setting through to policy formation and its legitimisation. It suggests why it is that despite clearly identified severe and widespread problems, which have been shown to drive and...

The relationships between poverty and the environment are highly contested, debated and researched. The sustainable development agenda, advocated at the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development, brings these relationships to the fore. Environmental sustainability, alongside social...

This paper examines recent contributions to the analysis of poverty, particularly those emphasising the constraints on the poor posed by social relations and institutions that systematically benefit the powerful. It proposes an analytic framework for study of the causes of poverty, responses to...