Posts tagged under Fieldwork
Research on urban poverty: ATM Team in Hanoi
The Asian Trends Monitoring Team is ready to go to Hanoi. From Friday, May 18th, to Thursday, May 24th, Taufik and Johannes will visit organisations working with and for Hanoi’s poor. We will talk to people in slums, on the street and to NGO workers in order to find out more about how people overcome the challenges of being poor in a bustling city.
To support our qualitative research with some more data, we are also conducting a survey among the poor in Hanoi. We aim to collect responses from about 350 respondents, the same sample size we had reached in Jakarta and Manila. You are already curious about the results? Read more about our survey results in recent blog posts about saving’s strategies,access to credit, and Jakarta’s water supply. Also check out this video about street fights in Jakarta’s slums.
Moreover, in about a week or so we will release our next ATM Bulletin on Jakarta’s poor with detailed information about our field trip to Jakarta. So stay tuned for the release.
In the meanwhile, we will try to post regular updates about our experiences in Hanoi, so make sure you check the blog for updates throughout the next week or simply Like us on facebook to automatically see our updates in your newsfeed.
Underdeveloped financial services for Jakarta’s Poorest
The Asian Trends Monitoring team conducted a survey among Jakarta’s slum dwellers between February 24 and March 2nd 2012. We collected a total of 348 responses from seven different neighbourhoods in Jakarta with the help of 15 research assistants from the University of Indonesia.
Picture by andiona
One of the items required respondents to rate their difficulty of “Saving Money”. More than a third of respondents answered that they were unable to save, while another third said that it was very difficult for them (see previous blog post). Seeing those results we assumed that a majority of them would then turn to different sources to borrow money for consumption smoothing. Among our expectations were a high percentage of Microcredit users, followed by the usage of informal money lenders, always a thriving business in poor areas.
However, the actual results were a little bit surprising. Only about 28% of respondents indicated that they actually borrow money.
It turned out that the primary source for borrowing money is among friends and relatives (52%), followed by cooperatives (22%), and informal money lenders (16%). Commercial bank loans, pawn shops, and MFIs were the least popular credit sources.
Designers Wanted: Make a difference for poor communities!
Where do you think this bag was designed? Have you seen it in one of the boutiques along Singapore’s famous shopping street Orchard Road? Do you wish you owned such a bag or you would love to be involved in designing a product line like this? Then read on:
This bag was designed and produced in the Philippines and is made entirely from recycled products. In fact it was produced by women from a trashpicker community from the former Smokey Mountain site in Tondo, Metro Manila (see further below for a picture of their livelihood). It is made from 1,000+ can lids in intricate craftsmanship and the proceeds directly benefit poor families (they earn a regular income for the production) as well as the work of the responsible charity, the Philippine Christian Foundation (PCF). In Paradise Heights (former Smokey Mountain) PCF runs a school for the trashpickers’ children.
Health reforms in Asia: equity issues to consider in 2012
Last month (in 2011! Came around quick didn’t it?) I was fortunate to catch a plethora of super-interesting presentations at the Elsevier Social Science & Medicine conference on Health System Reform in Asia – check out the copious oral program alone here. Rather upsettingly, no less than 6 parallel sessions meant I didn’t catch all of them. Here’s some of the highlights from the session on inequity:
Aditi Iyer and Gita Sen of IIM Bangalore on the intersections of gender and class inequalities in healthcare access over two decades of reforms in India, using 3 rounds of household survey data:
health facilities in India: only for the guys?
- Women generally ration treatment because they perceive their illness to not be “serious”, whereas men ration treatment due to “financial barriers”, indicating that women may not perceive that their health is important. Aditi linked women understating their need due to sheer lack of time that they have to visit healthcare facilities, due to work and family demands.
- ‘Perverse (gender) catch up’ is observed in non-treatment among the poorest during the mid-1990s and 2000s, whereby the poorest men were becoming as badly off as the women due to financial barriers. This was related mainly to increases in drug prices and possibly to user charges.
Helping Burmese migrants to access health services in Mae Sot
“More than 50% of our patients are from inside Burma – even the central provinces” explains Dr Cynthia Muang of the Mae Tao Clinic (MTC). These internally displaced persons (IDPs) often lack access to health services in Burma, with some travelling through dense jungle for up to seven days to receive treatment at the MTC.
Dr Cynthia Muang outside the clinic’s library
Most Burmese migrants in Thailand come to escape the fighting between the Burmese government and minority groups, especially the Karen people, whilst others come to Thailand for greater employment opportunities in factories. The MTC estimates that there are over 550,000 IDPs within Burma, with the largest concentration along the Thailand-Burma border, in addition to over two million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand (most of them illegal). MTC treats most patients for free at the clinic as many cannot afford to pay for services, “they need at least 200 – 300 baht to come to the clinic” a great sum for IDPs. Knowing the challenges faced by migrants to reach the clinic, the MTC works with other NGOs like the Backpack Health Worker Team (BHWT) training Burmese mobile medics to provide preventive and maternal and child health services in the Karen villages bordering Thailand, often dangerous work in the presence of landmines and daily fighting between the Karen fighters and the army.
Starting a new life in a legal grey zone: a Burmese refugee family
Hundreds of migrants cross the Thai / Burma border daily – some legally via this checkpoint, others not
20 years ago, Madame Khin* decided to run away from her home in Burma after she was randomly arrested and harassed by a Burmese police officer. She belongs to the Muslim ethnic minority of the Rohingya people settled in western Burma. She wanted to escape the forlorn life of poverty and made her way over the Thailand-Burma border to Mae Sot.
Madame Khin is the head of a household of 11 members, all living in a former warehouse. The household is comprised of three small children, two teenagers, two working men, two women and two older women. However, only the children have Thai citizenship and are thus on secure legal ground. Madame Khin herself would be a considered an illegal immigrant under the law, but by staying out of trouble she has avoided the authorities for more than two decades. She is now taking care of her two grandchildren after her daughter and son-in-law passed away following an HIV infection.
Out of Bangkok: more opportunities await in Mae Sot, a Thai-Burmese border town
Communication with Burmese customers can be a challenge but gestures bridge the language gap
(Coming soon: Bulletin 14 on Borders and Migration – stay tuned for more updates)
During our field trip to Thailand, the Asian Trends Monitoring Team, travelled from Bangkok, to Phichit, to Chiang Mai, to Mae Sot and back to the capital. It was in Mae Sot that we met Mae-Noi and Lalana, mother and daughter, who jointly run mobile hawker business. At the time of the visit (May 2011), they had been in Mae Sot for only two months.
Originally, they were farmers in Kamphaeng Phet province, but decided to start a new life in Bangkok. The hard life as a farmer and the low economic returns were not what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives. They tried to make a living with a food stall in the streets of the Thai capital. But living costs in the city are much higher than in the countryside and the sheer amount of small food businesses was tough competition. “We had to sell our food at low prices which left only very small profits for ourselves. Life in Bangkok is also very expensive” says Mae-Noi.
Interview with Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs columnist, Financial Times
The ATM team got the chance to talk to Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs columnist at the Financial Times. He was visiting Singapore to participate in a roundtable event organised by the Asian Trends Monitoring Bulletin and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy on the topic of “Rising Asia, Growing Inequality”.
Rachman touched upon the issues of China’s growing economic influence in the region and its political consequences for ASEAN as an organisation as well as its individual member states. He drew comparisons to the European Integration process and pointed out how free of movement of goods, capital and labour helped bridge gaps in development between Eastern European member states and the core members. We also asked him about his perspective on the Arab spring revolts, the threat of social uprisings in Southeast Asia (e.g. a Burmese Spring) and regulatory gaps in the global financial system.
About Gideon Rachman
Gideon Rachman is chief foreign-affairs comlumnist for the Financial Times and author of Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety.
He joined the FT after a 15-year career at The Economist, which included spells as a foreign correspondent in Washington and as bureau chief in Brussels and Bangkok. He also edited The Economist’s business and Asia sections. His particular interests include American foreign policy, the European Union and globalization.
