Women’s mobility, neighbourhood socio-ecologies and homemaking in urban informal settlements

Abstract

The paper contributes to the growing research on relational thinking about housing and home by exploring the informal homes of rural migrants in Khulna city, Bangladesh. The concept of ‘unbounding’ is used to trace the fluidity and connections established between migrant homes and neighbourhood socio-ecologies. Walking interviews exploring women’s livelihoods reveal that different expendable agencies of the urban environment (e.g. trash, weeds and animal excreta) create conditions for labour in which migrant women hold specific competencies to secure essential resources for home. Unbounding positions home within a socio-ecology of multiple houses that women traverse to support their urban living. The approach offers opportunities to examine the unique ways urban homeless populations strategically as well as affectively engage with under-recognized agencies and actors in informal settlements. Unbounding provides a useful lens with which to raise new conceptual and empirical questions about housing and home in relation to the city that contributes to the homes and livelihoods of marginalized populations.