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Migrants and Machine Politics: How India's Urban Poor Seek Representation and Responsiveness
How poor migrants shape city politics during urbanization
As the Global South rapidly urbanizes, millions of people have migrated from the countryside to urban slums, which now house one billion people worldwide. The transformative potential of urbanization hinges on whether and how poor migrants are integrated into city politics. Popular and scholarly accounts paint migrant slums as exhausted by dispossession, subdued by local dons, bought off by wily politicians, or polarized by ethnic appeals. Migrants and Machine Politics shows how slum residents in India routinely defy such portrayals, actively constructing and wielding political machine networks to demand important, albeit imperfect, representation and responsiveness within the country's expanding cities.
Drawing on years of pioneering fieldwork in India's slums, including ethnographic observation, interviews, surveys, and experiments, Adam Michael Auerbach and Tariq Thachil reveal how migrants harness forces of political competition--as residents, voters, community leaders, and party workers--to sow unexpected seeds of accountability within city politics. This multifaceted agency provokes new questions about how political networks form during urbanization. In answering these questions, this book overturns longstanding assumptions about how political machines exploit the urban poor to stifle competition, foster ethnic favoritism, and entrench vote buying.
By documenting how poor migrants actively shape urban politics in counterintuitive ways, Migrants and Machine Politics sheds new light on the political consequences of urbanization across India and the Global South.
As the Global South rapidly urbanizes, millions of people have migrated from the countryside to urban slums, which now house one billion people worldwide. The transformative potential of urbanization hinges on whether and how poor migrants are integrated into city politics. Popular and scholarly accounts paint migrant slums as exhausted by dispossession, subdued by local dons, bought off by wily politicians, or polarized by ethnic appeals. Migrants and Machine Politics shows how slum residents in India routinely defy such portrayals, actively constructing and wielding political machine networks to demand important, albeit imperfect, representation and responsiveness within the country's expanding cities.
Drawing on years of pioneering fieldwork in India's slums, including ethnographic observation, interviews, surveys, and experiments, Adam Michael Auerbach and Tariq Thachil reveal how migrants harness forces of political competition--as residents, voters, community leaders, and party workers--to sow unexpected seeds of accountability within city politics. This multifaceted agency provokes new questions about how political networks form during urbanization. In answering these questions, this book overturns longstanding assumptions about how political machines exploit the urban poor to stifle competition, foster ethnic favoritism, and entrench vote buying.
By documenting how poor migrants actively shape urban politics in counterintuitive ways, Migrants and Machine Politics sheds new light on the political consequences of urbanization across India and the Global South.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published January 3, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 16, 2025
Easily one of the most well-researched books I've read. It systematically lays down the underlying assumptions it's looking to address. Then, over just four chapters full of data, graphs and great storytelling, the book gives you insane RoI in terms of aha moments!
Two things that made this such an extraordinary read:
1. The data visualization and explanation is lucid, and can be understood quite intuitively.
2. The authors and by extension, the book, are quite self aware. In my mind, books that claim to have caused paradigm shifts or changed the landscape are often pretentious and boring. The authors of this book call out what they haven't been able to achieve, and leave a lot of room for future research and researchers to come in and take the baton forward.
Highly recommended to anyone looking to understand the dynamic, often counter-intuitive world of politics driven by India's urban poor.
Two things that made this such an extraordinary read:
1. The data visualization and explanation is lucid, and can be understood quite intuitively.
2. The authors and by extension, the book, are quite self aware. In my mind, books that claim to have caused paradigm shifts or changed the landscape are often pretentious and boring. The authors of this book call out what they haven't been able to achieve, and leave a lot of room for future research and researchers to come in and take the baton forward.
Highly recommended to anyone looking to understand the dynamic, often counter-intuitive world of politics driven by India's urban poor.
January 11, 2026
I remember reading the book (most of it). First I have to say that this book painted a picture in my mind about life in the slum. Second this challenged my stereotyping of slums and did reveal a nexus of brokers-patrons with their motives governing political deals and paltry progress in the slums. This was a fresh read for me, and another salient feature is the preference of who gets the attention of the broker for issues. Overall a great read!. The average mean component effect was another interesting methodology read. Would like to see how this applies to South India as well.
April 7, 2024
How do migrants in our cities lay claims on the state? How do they collectivise and vote? How do slum leaders emerge and do they have certain characteristics? Adam and Tariq answer these questions and more, building on robust mixed methods research and in riveting style. A must read for urbanists and migration researchers.
I'd have loved more on how slum leaders and migrants engage with/demand for environmental services.
I'd have loved more on how slum leaders and migrants engage with/demand for environmental services.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews