Non-Linear Migrations and Urban Resilience

This paper looks at migrations as an inherent component of urban resilience and critically examines the linear understanding of rural-to-urban migration in urban studies. Based on an eight-month-long qualitative empirical study in Dhaka, Bangladesh, this paper reports how migrants from different rural parts of the country, with their complex experiences around migrations, enter various spatial systems in urban Dhakaranging from shared living to institutional involvements to temporal displacements due to external factors(such as pandemic). This paper also documents how their nonlinear migratory journeys contribute to building a sense of urban resilience toward the uncertainties that various spatial systems offer to them. Drawing from a rich body of literature on urbanization, rural-urban migration, and actor-based resilience, we explain how alternative narratives of non-linear migration studies from our fieldwork can redefine urban resilience from a migrant’s perspective.