Poor People’s Politics in Urban Southeast Asia

Abstract

This chapter explains the form, content and operation of poor people’s politics in Southeast Asia. Because their basic needs are barely met within prevailing social structures, the poor must act constantly to shore up the resource strategies and social relations they depend on to survive. Their politics reflects this: it rarely challenges prevailing power relations and is more often concerned to make immediate gains—until threats and or opportunities are such that they act more disruptively to challenge the status quo. These features and dimensions of poor people’s politics are illustrated in two case studies of informal settlers’ responses to their forced evictions, in Jakarta and Metro Manila.