Livelihoods at the Margins: Surviving the City

Sex workers, street hawkers, drug sellers, cleaners—they are people living on the margins of urban life who are ubiquitous but widely misunderstood and notably absent from mainstream economic analyses. In Livelihood on the Margins, anthropologists and practitioners engaged in hands-on development work use fine-grained ethnographic research to cut through the conventional narratives that romanticize, victimize, or demonize these populations. They go beyond the trendy “sustainable livelihoods...