I am a social anthropologist in my final year of PhD. I conducted an urban based ethnographic study in a residential area of Delhi over a period of 20 months. I lived and worked with a community of migrants who were resettled from central Delhi by one of the Delhi Development Authority’s ‘slum rehabilitation’ programs in 2002.

My research focuses on what can be learned about mobility from observing community members everyday experiences and talking to them about their lives and their ideas about ‘better life’. The research, designed in 2 phases involved an initial household census of 140 flats followed by a period of individual and group based interviews with 70 male and 70 female respondents chosen at random from the initial household sample.

I am currently engaged in a simultaneous process of analysis and writing. I am drafting several thesis chapters which focus on the themes of marriage and kinship, new employment and incapacity through alcoholism and drug abuse and what these mean for people’s assessment of better life and whether or not it has been or can be achieved.

Supervisory Team: Dr Nitya Rao and Dr Bryan Maddox

Email: f.hay@uea.ac.uk

Publications

Development Amid Deprivation: Learning in Preparation for Adult Life among Low-Income Households in Delhi