Market Integration and Inequality

My research in Matlab, Bangladesh, examines how market integration—the expansion of cash-based livelihoods and wage labor—has altered the ways people cooperate and manage risk, producing new forms of social inequality emerging through everyday exchange. 

Through multilayered network analysis and field experiments, I found that as cash becomes the dominant medium of exchange, traditional mutual aid increasingly takes the form of unequal patron–client relationships, where salaried households provide money in return for labor or goods (preprint; under review). 

In addition, a field experiment on risk preference showed that households well connected through monetary exchange were more willing to take risks, while those relying on neighbors for food or household items tended to avoid them, revealing how unequal access to cash-based support networks leads to divergent strategies for managing uncertainty (preprint; revised and resubmitted).

Finally, I further examined how economic inequality within social networks feeds back to influence their ability to respond to shocks. In areas with low inequality, experience of shocks tended to expand social networks, while in high-inequality areas, people’s ability to mobilize support in response to shocks was severely limited, showing that inequality weakens the very networks needed to cope with crisis (manuscript in revision). 

Collaborators: Mary Shenk, Neil MacLaren, David Nolin, Nurul Alam

Climate Change and Mobility

Bangladesh is among the countries most severely exposed to climate change, facing intensifying floods, cyclones, and droughts that threaten livelihoods and recovery. At the same time, it is the world’s eighth-largest remittance-receiving country (2020), where millions of migrant workers send money home to support their families. These remittances transferred by migrants now exceed Official Development Aid (ODA) and foreign direct investment combined, providing a critical safety net in places where formal welfare systems are weak.

Using national survey data linked with satellite-based climate records, my research examines whether remittances from migrant workers help households manage climate risks by extending their access to resources beyond the areas directly affected by floods or droughts. By analyzing how these long-distance financial connections buffer families from spatially correlated environmental and economic risks, this work reveals how mobility can expand the spatial reach of adaptation in one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries. 

Another part of this research investigates how remittances influence household decisions to stay or move when facing floods. Analysis of national survey data shows that money sent home by migrants can serve as a flexible resource, enabling some families to relocate when flood risks intensify while helping others adapt locally by investing in safer housing, diversified crops, or land purchases. In this way, migration and in-place adaptation are interconnected through remittance flows, as the movement of people in one place supports the capacity of others to endure environmental pressure at home.

Collaborators: Anne Pisor, Kyle Aune, Mook Bangalore, SM Manzoor Ahmed Hanifi, Azmery Hera

Climate Change and Cooperation

I am also leading a series of complementary field-based projects in Chakaria, a coastal region of Bangladesh increasingly affected by floods, cyclones, and seawater intrusion. Frequent flooding and storm surges have forced many households to relocate from low-lying villages to higher ground, disrupting long-standing social ties and redistributing population across risk gradients. Seawater intrusion has caused widespread salinization of soil and drinking water, contributing to rising rates of hypertension and driving livelihood transitions from rice cultivation to shrimp aquaculture. While shrimp farming has improved incomes for some, it has also intensified salinity and fueled conflicts between rice and shrimp farmers, weakening the collective capacity to adapt to climate change. 

In Chakaria, therefore, the effects of climate change are inseparable from the social and economic transformations it sets in motion: migration and livelihood transitions are reshaping the networks through which households exchange resources, cooperate, and manage uncertainty. My current work combines household surveys, focus group interviews, and multiplex social network analysis to examine how these intertwined processes influence health and cooperation under escalating environmental risk. 

Collaborators: Mary Shenk, Anne Pisor, SM Manzoor Ahmed Hanifi