Survival Tactics of Mother-Child Households: Narratives of Mothers of ‘Bengali’ Girls Working on the ‘Streets’ in Karachi

Abstract

In Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, there is a ‘street’ where single women (including de facto single mothers and those who are in single-mother alike situation) gather with their children, especially girls, in the evening until midnight. These mothers are widowed or divorced, or they have children with a husband who is addicted to drugs or is ill, or who has another family. Many of the mothers are first or second-generation immigrants from Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) or the Arakan region of Myanmar, known as ‘Bengalis,’ and they do not have Pakistani citizenship and are stateless. The mothers try to escape the desperate situation of their families, who struggle to even afford food for the day, by earning money from their children's peddling and begging on the streets, and by obtaining free meals from restaurants.

This paper aims to clarify what kind of tactics women in crisis situations use to make ends meet, particularly in response to the sudden crisis of the Coronavirus pandemic that began in March 2020. Since 2017, the author has been conducting research into the reasons why children have been coming out onto the streets to beg or sell things alongside their mothers. In this paper, the data collected so far, which has focused on the children, has been reanalyzed from the perspective of the mothers. New data has also been collected through interviews to ascertain the tactics adopted by mothers in the wake of the Coronavirus crisis followed by economic crises. It can be concluded that in response to the crises, mothers are attempting to establish the ‘street’ as a safe and secure environment for themselves, since they are unable to receive necessary support from the government and communities.