Assets, Livelihoods, and Social Policy

Given the lack of adequate universal social welfare for those unable to find jobs in the salaried formal sector, the livelihoods and well-being of most poor people depend heavily on their asset base. This includes their ability to access and accumulate assets, obtain decent returns from these assets and use their asset base to manage risks. This book discusses the diverse strategies adopted by people in different contexts and countries to accumulate assets through migration, housing investments, natural resources management and informal business. An asset-based social policy can strengthen asset accumulation strategies as well as help the poor to overcome the constraints of unfavourable institutional environments.

To a large extent, asset accumulation strategies depend on the agency exercised by people themselves through individual or collective action. At the same time, the status of policies and institutions can enable or hinder these strategies and affect livelihood outcomes. In synthesis, the case studies presented in the book lead to differentiation between three different types of policies:

· policies that affect outcomes by directly influencing access to assets by the poor, such as land, housing, natural resources or credit policies;
· policies and public investments that change the nature of return on assets, such as investments in rural roads, agricultural inputs and market development; and
· policies that transform the value of assets held by the poor by virtue of administrative decisions that increase or reduce value, such as the reclassification of land from arable or pasture to protected lands, land use regulations affecting resource use, or modifications to regulations governing labour rights or migration.

The chapters in this book were originally commissioned from scholars to re-examine major gaps in knowledge and development practice 10 years after the 1995 Copenhagen World Summit on Social Development. Chapter 1 sets the context of asset-based policies and public action in a polycentric world. Here Moser and Dani claim that more than restoring the state’s position at the centre of development policy, what is needed is to consider the myriad community agencies, visions and institutions around the globe. Chapter 2 introduces a framework for an asset-based social policy aimed at creating opportunities for people rather than simply designing policies to protect them from market forces. These authors stress the need for more second generation policy that assures asset accumulation instead of solely asset production. In Part 2, on migrations, Chapter 3 analyzes for Ecuadorian migrants from three of the country’s main cities the considerable imbalance between family consumption and housing or financial capital investment. Chapter 4 examines the return of West African transnational migrants, for whom not only migrating but also returning imply opportunities for social well-being, hence the need for specific policies for returnees. Chapter 5 observes the different ways in which migration policy in Pakistan and the Philippines can strengthen the asset accumulation of migrants and help them manage migration risks. Chapter 6 describes the international division of reproductive labour, in which the social relations of care are mediated by the manner in which transnational processes intersect with internal social policies.

Part 3, Housing as an Asset in Informal Settlements, focuses directly on reinvigorating the role of housing policies as part of social development agendas. Chapter 7 observes how national federations formed by slum and shack dwellers are already well established in 12 countries and engaged in many initiatives to provide or improve housing and basic services; where governments support them, the scale of what they can achieve increases very considerably. Chapter 8 analyzes the Baan Mankong programme in Thailand, where urban communities are vigorously renegotiating their relations with the st