Building Forward Better: Inclusive Livelihood Support in Nairobi’s Informal Settlements

Kimani, Joseph; Steege, Rosalind; Makau, Jack; Nyambuga, Kilion; Wairutu, Jane; Tolhurst, Rachel

doi:10.19088/1968-2021.104

Cited by 15 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…In many cases, and in line with previous evaluations of such efforts, these new programmes face significant challenges in identifying and delivering benefits and risk reproducing old exclusions (see e.g., Kimani et al 2021). For example, a survey of informal workers in 2020 found that less than half of informal workers received cash or food benefits in 12 cities where governments announced relief measures to support vulnerable groups, while the level of relief provided was insufficient to have a positive impact on food security and coping strategies (Alfers et al 2020).…”

Section: Crisis Relief: New Intersections Old Exclusionsmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Notably, some relief programmes have recognised informal workers as a particularly vulnerable group, while the UN (2020: 9) suggests that basic social protection be extended to informal workers -though with providing clear guidance about how to target these workers. Accordingly, most programmes have targeted relief using pre-existing registers of vulnerable populations without a specific focus on informal workers (e.g., Rateng 2020b; Kimani et al 2021). 15 While some informal workers overlap with groups included in these registers, vulnerability is an imperfect proxy for informality, leading these programmes to exclude significant subsets of informal workers.…”

Section: Inaccessible Crisis Reliefmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In some contexts, poor populations and informal workers have been particularly targeted in the enforcement of lockdown regulations -with, for example, almost a quarter of a million people arrested for contravening regulations in the first two months of the lockdown in South Africa (BusinessTech 2020). Similarly, in Nairobi there has been an increase in human rights violations, police violence, and harassment of small and micro business operators as a result of the pandemic (Kimani et al 2021).…”

Section: Connection Taxation and Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Informal Workers and the State: The Politics of Connection and Disconnection During a Global Pandemic

Gallien¹,

Boogaard²

2021

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In low- and middle-income countries, informal workers are particularly vulnerable to the health and economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and often neglected by policy responses. At the same time, the crisis is rapidly changing the ways that states engage with informal workers. We argue that the relationships between informal workers and states – and the politics of creating and accessing these linkages – are a critical and frequently overlooked part of the politics of the pandemic. Both pre-existing structural disconnection from the state—embodied, for example, through limited access to health infrastructure—and state attempts to build new connections, including through cash transfer programmes for informal workers, have a profound impact on the effectiveness and reach of state crisis responses. Without considering the varied and dynamic nature of the linkages between states and informal workers we cannot understand the heterogeneous health and economic impacts of the pandemic, state capacity to respond to the crisis, or institutional change in the context of crisis.

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Section: Crisis Relief: New Intersections Old Exclusionsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Inaccessible Crisis Reliefmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Connection Taxation and Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Informal Workers and the State: The Politics of Connection and Disconnection During a Global Pandemic

Gallien¹,

Boogaard²

2021

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“…Given informal workers’ histories of disconnection and marginalization from the state and health care, histories of harassment at the hands of state agents, increased crackdowns on informality during the pandemic, and greater risk of exposure to the virus (e.g. Gallien and van den Boogaard, 2021; Kimani et al., 2021; Moussié et al., 2020; Resnick, 2019), some have argued that informality may be linked to low trust in state institutions and public health officials, and that this may have deteriorated further during the pandemic, in turn leading to lower willingness to comply with pandemic‐related health policies (Braham, 2022; Harvey, 2020). Second, the broader literature on marginalization and informality tends to focus on the informal economy, rather than exploring its heterogeneity.…”

Section: Marginalization Trust and Health‐seeking Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vaccine Hesitancy among Informal Workers: Gendered Geographies of Informality in Lahore

Mohmand,

Boogaard,

Gallien

et al. 2023

Development and Change

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What is the relationship between trust in the state and vaccine hesitancy among a marginalized sub‐population? This article explores attitudes towards COVID‐19 vaccination programmes of informal workers in the context of Lahore, Pakistan, and draws on in‐depth conversations with informal workers across four sectors in 2021. It finds a surprising disconnect between vaccine scepticism and actual decisions to have the vaccination. Those that were vaccinated did not necessarily believe in its effectiveness, while trust in the state did not critically shape health‐seeking behaviour. The article observes striking sectoral variation in perceptions of the pandemic and willingness to get vaccinated, with greater scepticism and hesitancy among male‐dominated street vendors and transport workers relative to females working as home‐based sub‐contractors and domestic workers. It argues that this is driven by workers’ heterogeneous access to and interaction with work and public space, which shaped how they experienced lockdowns, interacted with the state and other actors during the pandemic and perceived the risks of the pandemic. The article's findings highlight heterogeneous dynamics within the informal economy, which it refers to as the gendered geographies of work and movement, and how these can play a critical role in shaping responses to public health measures beyond the context of the informal economy.

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“…For others, the issue is not with the adjective 'better', but rather with the idea of building back something that was there before, with the suggestion that a previous state is to where you want to return. Many scholars thus prefer the expression 'building forward better' (Kimani et al, 2021).…”

Section: 'Building Back Better': a Slogan And A Symbolmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Building back better’ in the Caribbean: an introduction

Wilkinson

Campbell

2022

Disasters

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In a region beset by serial disasters, resilient recovery from hazardous events is not just a worthy goal, it is also an imperative. The Caribbean Resilience and Recovery Knowledge Network (CRRKN) was set up in November 2019 with funding from the Global Challenges Research Fund in the United Kingdom to encourage knowledge exchange and learning between researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, to generate a research agenda, and to promote more equitable and sustainable recovery after disasters and a more resilient future for the Caribbean. The CRRKN brings together a team of world-class partners with extensive and complementary expertise in climate change science, disaster risk management, communications, and resilience and sustainability studies. The premise of the network is that transformational shifts can only be achieved if lessons from past events are institutionalised through joint analysis, reflection, and dialogue on recovery processes, producing a fundamental change in the way that recovery is understood and supported across the Caribbean. One approach used is that of 'forensic analysis' of past events, conducted by multiple stakeholders to co-create lessons stemming from recovery.One month after the CRRKN was established, a 'Forensic Workshop on Disaster Recovery' was convened to foreground the '11 th Caribbean Conference on Comprehensive Disaster Management' (held in Sint Maarten on 2-6 December 2019). This workshop was the first event of its kind in the Caribbean, bringing together governmental, civil society, and scientific stakeholders with different experiences, expertise, and views to retrace decisions and steps taken following two separate disasters: Hurricane Maria in Dominica in 2017; and the volcanic eruptions in Montserrat in 1995-97. The task was to identify and agree collectively on the most critical lessons learned from recovery processes on the two islands and pinpoint unresolved recovery issues, including those that could not have been planned for easily. For example, not knowing what resources will be available to respond to, and recover from, a disaster, before it happens, poses a major challenge to Caribbean states. Recovery processes were found to be complex and not well understood by the various groups, making it difficult to translate lessons into meaningful recommendations that can be codified for recovery planning elsewhere. Further joint analysis of disaster impacts, recovery, and policy effectiveness is certainly needed.This special issue of Disasters reflects on the increased virtual communication that is occurring within the Caribbean and across the Atlantic (spurred inadvertently by

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Building Forward Better: Inclusive Livelihood Support in Nairobi’s Informal Settlements

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Informal Workers and the State: The Politics of Connection and Disconnection During a Global Pandemic

Informal Workers and the State: The Politics of Connection and Disconnection During a Global Pandemic

Vaccine Hesitancy among Informal Workers: Gendered Geographies of Informality in Lahore

‘Building back better’ in the Caribbean: an introduction

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