Home-based enterprises (HBEs) are an accepted component in the informal sector in rapidly developing cities. However, they have generally received quite a bad press, especially through a concentration on the exploitation evident in piece-rate homework. From our work in low-income neighbourhoods in Cochabamba (Bolivia), New Delhi (India), Surabaya (Indonesia) and Pretoria (South Africa), we assess HBEs with respect to the characteristics of the informal sector put forward in the literature. We examine our samples of HBEs against such characteristics as small, low operator incomes, informal labour relations and non-separation of production and consumption. We find that they largely conform to expectations. Incomes are low but they are very significant in poverty alleviation. Although many HBEs require few skills, a few compete effectively in international markets.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

In recent months, pictures of millions of homes flattened and washed away by the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 26 th December, 2004, have been seen on the media. Housing vulnerability is an obvious component of the disaster; the centrality of housing to the material losses suffered, the apparent ease with which so many dwellings were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, the effect on the residents of the economic and material shock of losing their homes and property. This article looks at housing and vulnerability at several levels within the context of daily life, and of mitigating the effects of disasters on housing and its occupants. It begins by setting the context of housing loss within disasters in recent times. This is followed by an examination of the benefits which housing provision can bring to the need to reduce vulnerability, through how and by whom it is constructed and the opportunities it provides for income earning.