‘One has to manage and it’s who you know’: social support and coping strategies among urban poor residents during COVID-19

Wafa Alam and Sabina Faiz Rashid

Chapter 17 in The Elgar Companion to Health and the Sustainable Development Goals, 2025, pp 311-330 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter reviews how in the absence of formal power structures and voice in slum settlements in Dhaka city, Bangladesh, informal settlement dwellers drew on social relationships and informal networks with others in their communities such as neighbours, landlords, local shopkeepers, and slum leaders for their survival during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Many also built on connections with NGOs to access health and other related services. These both stable and temporal networks supported informal settlement residents by providing cash or food support, receiving goods on credit, or assisted families with access to relief materials, health services and even income earning opportunities. This illustrates the critical importance of informal relationships which are based on trust, providing a system of solidarity and crucial support for poor communities which were badly affected, helping to mitigate the effects of the pandemic in the absence of formal long-term State support.

Keywords: Development Studies; Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781803927244.00027 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21762_17

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().