ARI Working Paper Series

Urban growth levels in Pakistan remain high with migration as a key dynamic in the accelerating process of social and political-economic change.With an estimated population of 21 million, Karachi is Pakistan’s largest city and ranks as one of the most populace cities in Asia. Migrants especially those who are poor confront a hostile, risky and precarious future in the city marked by social exclusion, segregation and unemployment.How do migrants engage the city and navigate territories in unfamiliar settings? What materialities, anchorage points and practices facilitate emplacement? Drawing on my ongoing fieldwork in Karachi’s peri-urban frontier where the state’s reach is partial and social networks meager, this working paper reflects on these questions to consider how migrants secure new futures in Karachi’s rapidly changing landscape. I locate the specificities of the peri-urban through three entry points: (dis)emplacement, mobility and the nexus between brokerage, the state and the politics of urban space.