kinship belt
As defined by: Nakanishi, T. (2006) Hidden Community Development among the Urban Poor: Informal Settlers in Metro Manila, Policy and Society, 25:4, 37-61
[Our hypothesis is] “the urban poor in Metro Manila, despite appearing segmented and dispersed, are connected by wide and thin networks and share a kind of common culture. Everyday life in the urban locality, which is based on village endogamy, is assumed to be a type of complicated and unconscious local social networking, as suggested by Jacobs and Scott (Jacobs 1961; Scott 1998). Such local networks can work across Metro Manila by means of the chains of dyad relationships in the kinship-matrimonial networks created by homogamy; in other words, the inter-marriages among the poor are induced by the logic in the poverty paradox explained above. The narrow sphere of marriage determined by poverty and social exclusion will increase propinquital homogamy, namely, inter-marriages among the residents in the neighborhood who belong to almost the same income bracket and reside in different but nearby localities. This process will promote the formation of weak social relationships, and thus create subconscious, unorganised, but vast social networks among the urban poor. We term these networks kinship belts.”
“All poor localities in Metro Manila are connnected to each other and form a global homogenous social group.”














