Squatter Settlements: Urbanised Spaces? Annapurna Shaw This is the Indian edition of the book City Requiem: Gender and the Politics of Poverty published in 2003 by the University of Minnesota Press. Based on 11 months of fieldwork done in Kolkata in 1997, it is a scholarly and well written study of the poor living in the south-eastern fringes of the city and the processes, institutions and politics that keep them so. Using post-structuralist feminist theory and postmodern cultural interpretations, Roy stretches the boundaries of research in poverty studies to come up with fresh and interesting perspectives into the changing character and location of poverty in the metropolitan area, the gendered nature of poverty and the practices of institutions of the state and political parties that perpetuate poverty. The Indian edition has a 50-page introduction written in 2007 to connect the earlier edition, which is based on fieldwork done 10 years ago, to current realities of advancing globalisation and neoliberal policies of the state. With our cities growing larger and larger, their fringes or where the urban and rural meet, have become sites of conflict over land and other resources, and are experiencing considerable demographic and social change. There is clearly a need to incorporate understanding of the peri-urban areas of our cities and the socio-spatial processes that produce them in order to grasp the full implications of metropolitan urban growth. There is likewise a need for constant updating of empirical findings on the poor and more specifically, the urban poor, for with our cities becoming more overcrowded, the old slums within the city core are no longer the predominant places where the poor reside. Squatter settlements in the periphery of the city and along roads, canals and other vacant public land constitute an increasingly important type of residence for the urban poor. Growth in such settlements since the 1980s is an indicator of increasing landlessness in rural areas and the resultant distress migration into urban areas. Also on the increase is the daily commuting into our largest metropolitan areas by thousands of rural residents working mainly in the city
