The poverty trap: a grounded theory on the price of survival for the urban poor in Mexico

The paper examines the growing population of Mexico’s urban poor living in underserviced, irregular settlements (colonias) on city outskirts. These areas lack formal recognition and basic services, forcing residents into improvisational, short-term tactics rather than long-term strategies. Framing poverty relationally—as a problem of power differentials shaped by interactions with state and non-state actors—the authors argue that adaptive behaviors needed for survival often create self-reinforcing poverty traps. The study addresses multidimensional poverty (income, education, health, environment, nutrition, safety) and asks: How do the actions that the urban poor take to drive themselves out of poverty contribute to keeping them poor? By analyzing over 120 interviews across 10 cities in three regions, the study aims to reveal the trade-offs and hidden costs that deplete resources and impede social mobility, thereby informing better-designed interventions.

The authors draw on relational poverty theory, which locates poverty in power relations between the poor and privileged actors, challenging culture-of-poverty narratives. They connect this to the concept of poverty traps—self-reinforcing mechanisms that operate across social-ecological levels—where adaptive behaviors necessary for survival consume scarce resources and limit future opportunities. Prior work documents survival tactics and local networks among Latin America’s urban poor, but also highlights their erosion and the inverse care law, where lower power correlates with lower-quality services. The paper engages with scholarship on adverse incorporation, clientelism, and urban informality, noting how the classification of settlements as irregular/illegal shapes both policy and lived experience. It also references the notion of “slums of hope,” where aspirations coexist with structures that perpetuate precarity, and integrates strengths-based perspectives that recognize resilience while acknowledging these strengths do not necessarily translate into social mobility.

Design: Qualitative study using Grounded Theory with a reflexive, interpretive thematic analysis. The approach centers an emic perspective of the urban poor, situating household experiences within broader social structures and interactions. Sites and sampling: Data were collected in 11 marginalized neighbourhoods on the outskirts of 10 Mexican cities across three regions (North, Centre, South), selected from official maps for underdevelopment and socioeconomic status. Two initially considered cities were excluded for safety. Households without rent, in informal processes of land acquisition and self-built housing, were prioritized. The unit of analysis was the household (often multigenerational and recomposed); key informants were recruited for domains of education, health, nutrition, income, environment, and safety. Participants: 115 participants (75 women, 40 men), aged 12–76, including heads of 36 households (mainly mothers/grandmothers, four fathers), teachers and students, health personnel (nine doctors/nurses), employers (small businesses), police/security, open-population residents, and soup-kitchen staff. Two semi-structured group interviews included 14 participants (six women, eight men). Data collection: Semi-structured interviews and observations focused on income, nutrition, education, health, safety, and environment. Interviews began with general prompts and followed participants’ leads; average length ~38 minutes (range ~10–60+ minutes). Fieldwork occurred between February 11 and April 11, 2019. Interviews were audio-recorded with written and verbal informed consent; no compensation was provided. Researchers avoided door-to-door recruitment, left sites before dark, and did not engage local power brokers (caciques) to minimize influence. Data management and analysis: Interviews were transcribed by trained staff; field observations were documented in standardized forms and diaries. Coding sought balance across topics, interviewee types, and sites; 106 interviews were coded until theoretical saturation. Initial coding by the first author was refined collaboratively. Triangulation included cross-participant comparisons (e.g., students vs teachers) and interview-observation convergence. Data were coded and organized with NVivo 11. Reflexive, interpretive thematic analysis identified themes and relationships, considering dialectical continua (e.g., acceptance vs rejection of services). Iterative model-building yielded an integrated conceptual model presented in the Results/Discussion.

Context and conditions: Residents live on irregular, underserviced land lacking paved roads, drainage, reliable electricity and water, waste collection, gas delivery, security patrols, schools, and nearby health facilities. Houses are self-built with low-cost materials and vulnerable to hazards; improvised service connections pose health and legal risks. Agency and tactics: Families employ intensive labor, micro-entrepreneurship, and informal service access. Water is obtained via drums, trucks, and clandestine taps; electricity via risky overhead line hookups; roads cannot be self-provisioned, constraining service access (gas, waste collection, police, transport). Quotes illustrate informal tapping of water and electricity and how paving improves police response. Hidden costs and trade-offs: Survival entails persistent expenditures of cash, time, energy, and space and opportunity costs (e.g., missed work/school to wait for water trucks, higher transport costs due to distance/unpaved roads). Health and education access requires outlays (fuel, food, lodging, medications) despite nominally free services; quality is poorer, queues longer, and supplies scarce. Political paving/sewer projects are often low quality and short-lived, with risks including flooding and injury. Social networks: Kin and neighbor support persists but is weakened by migration and generalized scarcity; reciprocity obligations may breed resentment and further deplete resources. External aid from government, religious, and political actors is frequently unreliable, low-quality, stigmatized, or politically motivated (inverse care law). Trajectory: Some incremental improvements occur over years (e.g., when children begin to work), but residents rarely reach expected living standards; hopes for upward mobility are deferred to the next generation. Study scope and data points: 115 participants across 11 neighbourhoods in 10 cities; 106 interviews coded; fieldwork in early 2019. Themes consistently show that adaptive efforts to secure basic services carry cumulative costs that entrench households in poverty traps.

Findings demonstrate that adaptive behaviors essential for survival in irregular settlements—informal access to water/electricity, reliance on weak social networks, and micro-entrepreneurship—incur ongoing financial, temporal, health, legal, and opportunity costs. These costs reduce savings, limit education and income prospects, and constrain mobility, thereby sustaining poverty traps. The relational nature of poverty is evident: more powerful actors (e.g., service providers, political brokers) exert influence through irregularization and poor-quality, politicized services, reproducing the inverse care law. Despite resilience and ingenuity, endurance does not translate into social mobility; instead, the urban poor enter a “Faustian bargain,” trading freedom from rent for long-term disadvantages and legal vulnerabilities. The discourse of “slums of hope” masks adverse incorporation into urban economies as low-cost labor, while the classification of settlements as irregular/illegal legitimizes neglect. These insights address the research question by showing how survival tactics, shaped by power relations and infrastructural deficits, unintentionally reinforce the conditions that keep people poor. The results underscore the need for integrated, participatory approaches that leverage community knowledge and coordinate across sectors to mitigate hidden costs and dismantle reinforcing mechanisms of the traps.

The study contributes a grounded theory of how the urban poor’s necessary survival tactics in irregular Mexican settlements impose hidden, cumulative costs that entrench poverty. It foregrounds relational power dynamics, infrastructural deficits, and the inverse care law as mechanisms by which resilience fails to yield mobility. The authors argue that interventions must be integrated, coordinated, and participatory—explicitly incorporating residents’ knowledge and strengths—to address multidimensional needs and reduce the price of survival. Future research should: compare conditions across Latin American cities; develop microeconomic models capturing households’ cash flows, savings, and reinvestment in informal enterprises; conduct longitudinal studies to trace mobility (or immobility) over time; and include perspectives of complementary actors (political brokers, service connectors, installment sellers, etc.) to map the broader ecosystem sustaining traps.

Two cities were excluded for safety, limiting representativeness of more dangerous contexts. The sample did not include families who had left colonias, preventing analysis of successful exits. The cross-sectional design reconstructed life cycles through different households rather than tracking the same families over time; a longitudinal design is needed. Some economic details (profits, savings, reinvestment) were unclear—participants may not track finances or may withhold information from outsiders. Access to key external actors (e.g., political leaders or brokers who facilitated land or services, installment sellers) was not achieved, limiting understanding of these influential roles.