Livelihoods and Development

'The subtitle New Perspectives is amply justified. For the understanding of livelihoods the six case studies and the concepts which both frame and derive from them break new ground with significant contemporary relevance. The cases include migrants, refugees, people in insecure and conflicted conditions, and rural people subject to rapid changes in policy, mobility, digital connectivity, rural-urban links and scope for networking. The vocabulary and lenses of the authors illuminate the changing nature of livelihoods for many poor and marginalised people. New perspectives are opened up by concepts such as livelihood trajectories, community pathways, translocal livelihoods, exclusionary processes, the everyday production of inequality, intangible forms of mobilities, geographies of fear and the control of space. Livelihoods and Development is a rich treasury of grounded insights which broaden and deepen our understanding and shed new light on the complexity, diversity and versatility of ever evolving livelihoods. It is essential reading to inform, inspire and extend the range of all who teach and research livelihoods. It has much too for thoughtful policy-makers and practitioners who wish to improve what they do in seeking to `leave no one behind'. I commend it to a wide audience. It is conceptually transformative. After this book, livelihood studies should never be quite the same again'.

Robert Chambers, Institute of Development Studies, UK