Moving in – Selling Out: the outcomes of slum rehabilitation in Mumbai

Slums have been present in developing cities landscapes for quite some time. And while central and local governments continue their quest for making their cities slum-free, the overall outcome of slum policies is in most cases unknown or unclear. Some studies have revealed that slum policies might have unexpected benefits such as the improvement of children's health or household's access to credit. Yet, others have pointed unforeseen side-effects such as poverty recycling: where poor slum dwellers aren't able to maintain new living conditions and sell/rent their dwelling moving back to the slum. This paper focuses on the effects of slum rehabilitation on residential mobility in order to test the myth of poverty recycling. In order to do so, an exhaustive household survey was carried out in the city of Mumbai, comprising 510 households in 4 rehabilitated sites and 5 to-be-rehabilitated sites. Results show that the magnitude of poverty recycling is small and that in most cases slum rehabilitation actually serves as a platform to attain better living conditions both for those who left as for newcomers.