Survival strategies of the urban poor and costs: The case of Gaziantep

The poor, who are out of the labor market or have to work informally, who cannot meet their basic needs such as nutrition, shelter, education and health, and who deeply feel social inequality, are living in the face of increasing poverty, reduce the effects of deterioration in their living conditions and overcome the difficulties of their daily existence. non-household; They develop various long- or short-term survival strategies. The aim of this study; to reveal the survival strategies developed by the poor and to reveal how these strategies affect the poverty experiences of the household members and to examine the long or short term costs on the poor from both the individual and household perspectives. The method of the research is qualitative research method based on hermeneutic perspective. Focused on forty poor households living in the Şehitkamil district of Gaziantep, with a low socioeconomic level, unemployed, without social security and without regular income, and interviewed with a total of forty people, twenty-eight women and twelve men, one head of household in each household. Data were collected using in-depth interview technique through a semi-structured interview form. As a result of the research, it has been revealed that the survival strategies of the poor are not only their own individual decisions, but also the structural factors have an important effect. Although the strategies developed by the poor help the poor to "save the day" and survive, they incur heavy costs for the members of the household in the long run. It has been revealed that this situation creates serious problems for household members and causes poverty to be reproduced by making poverty permanent.