Migrants and Machine Politics: How India's Urban Poor Seek Representation and Responsiveness

Migrants in urban slums in the Global South are often portrayed as powerless and exploited, but Migrants and Machine Politics shows how they actively construct and wield political machine networks to demand representation and responsiveness from city politics. This book challenges assumptions about how political machines exploit the urban poor and sheds new light on the political consequences of urbanization in India and the Global South.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 03 January 2023
Publisher: Princeton University Press

As the Global South undergoes rapid urbanization, millions of individuals are migrating from rural areas to urban slums, which now accommodate one billion people worldwide. The potential for transformation in urbanization hinges on the integration of poor migrants into city politics. Popular and scholarly narratives often portray migrant slums as plagued by dispossession, dominated by local dons, influenced by cunning politicians, or divided along ethnic lines.

Migrants and Machine Politics offers a groundbreaking perspective by demonstrating how slum residents in India actively construct and wield political machine networks to demand significant, albeit imperfect, representation and responsiveness within the country's expanding cities. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, including ethnographic observation, interviews, surveys, and experiments, Adam Michael Auerbach and Tariq Thachil unveil how migrants harness the forces of political competition as residents, voters, community leaders, and party workers to sow unexpected seeds of accountability within city politics. This multifaceted agency prompts new inquiries into the formation of political networks during urbanization. By documenting how poor migrants actively shape urban politics in unexpected ways, Migrants and Machine Politics sheds valuable light on the political ramifications of urbanization in India and the Global South.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691236094