Laying the groundwork: Building trust with a marginalised community in Mumbai, India

Participatory design highlights the complexity of individuals’ identities, social connections, power relationships to one another, and connections to the environment in which they live. Ideal participation assumes fairness and transparency, however, fair and transparent participation seldom happens, and less so for marginalised people living in slums. There is a lack of literature around the work required to contextualise the barriers towards equitable participation. In this paper, I outline participatory barriers with a marginalised community living in a slum in Mumbai, India from ethnographic studies conducted over a period of four months with residents living, working, socialising, studying and playing within that community. I identified four non-exhaustive categories of local challenges faced by community members, including terrain
interconnectedness, ownership and legal rights, agency of decision making, and the sense of community. This work presents an evolving methodology that aims to reframe the lack of agency into exercising change for collective well-being within the community.