ABSTRACT
This chapter shares the various livelihood strategies observed at the resettlement site depicting women not as passive, stereotypical “victims” of misery waiting to be rescued, but rather as agents actively making sense of and giving sense to their livelihood options. It presents them as previously ignored agents who displayed the ability to both define problems and design solutions. Their definition and design of livelihood options occurred independently of the aims of the nongovernmental and governmental organizations, political parties, and for-profit builders with a presence in their resettlement site. The chapter organizes the women into four categories: (a) those who harbored grievances, but were the most energized by the resettlement site’s potential for upward social mobility; (b) women who had supported their households previously from within the confines of their homes, but had begun working outside the home since relocation; (c) those whose lives in-relocation closely resembled their previous routines for managing home and work; and (d) women who were calling on external agencies to live up to their pre-relocation promises to provide the conditions they believed necessary to pursue a livelihood they chose.
