Transforming Constraints into Opportunities: Capitals, Capabilities, and Urban Resilience in Weak Governance Contexts in Bangladesh

This article examines how extremely poor households in urban Bangladesh navigate long-term resilience under conditions of chronic precarity and institutional fragility. Integrating Bourdieu’s theory of capitals with Sen’s capability approach through the bridging concept of conversion factors, we analyze the longitudinal life histories of five households in Dhaka and Narayanganj. Our findings demonstrate that asset possession alone does not produce resilience. Instead, resilience depends on whether institutions governing housing, health, social protection, and labor reliably enable households to translate resources into meaningful capabilities, what we term constrained agency . Where institutions failed, even hard-won gains proved reversible. This integrated framework advances resilience scholarship by specifying the mechanism connecting structural conditions to household outcomes and carries direct implications for the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 1 (no poverty), SDG 3 (good health and well-being), SDG 10 (reduced inequalities), SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities), and SDG 13 (climate action). Policy must center institutional reform over asset transfer alone.