Disorder and Despair: The Structural Roots of Youth Wellbeing in Islamabad’s Urban Slums

Abstract

The study focuses on youth well-being in the katchi abadis, or informal urban settlements in Islamabad, spaces where poverty, disorder, and exclusion coalesce in ways that influence youth’s routine life. Based on qualitative field research involving more than thirty semi-structured interviews with youth aged 12-16 (20 boys and 10 girls), the paper examines how factors of physical disorder, a lack of social cohesion, and limited educational and recreational opportunities shape the subjective experience of young people. Findings highlight how the lack of infrastructure, exploitative labor opportunities, and access to deviant peer groups limit opportunities for development but create conditions conducive to delinquency, hopelessness, and stress, particularly for younger adolescents and females. These results are indicative of more general structural conditions falling under Social Disorganization Theory (Shaw & McKay, 1942) and Urban Inequality Theory (Wacquant, 2008), focusing on the role of spatial and social disintegration in the reproduction of marginality. Simultaneously, “finding meaning in education, debate, work, or shared recreation” produces accounts of resilience among some youth, pointing to the role of supportive spaces. In addressing the structural nature of the problem, that the well-being of youth in slums is something beyond an issue of individuals, the study calls for policy responses that integrate solutions to spatial injustice with the expansion of public services and the building of trust between marginalized communities and the structures of the state. Positioning youth’s experiences against a backdrop of larger urban inequalities, this paper adds to the debates on issues of space, disorder, and well-being in informal settlements in Pakistan and in general South Asia.