Unveiling Hidden Poverty: Institutional Invisibility and Lived Experience in Bogotá — a four-paper PhD thesis by María Nathalia Ramírez, PhD Fellow at UNU-MERIT / Maastricht University, supervised by Prof. Dr. Franziska Gassmann and Dr. Zina Nimeh.
The arc of the thesis
The four papers answer one progressive question: what hidden poverty is, where the system structurally fails to see it, how it is lived from within, and why the development model generates it systematically.
Paper 1
What is it?
Theoretical · Completed
Paper 2
Where doesn’t the system see it?
Quantitative · In draft
Paper 3
How is it lived?
Mixed · In design
Paper 4
Why is it generated?
Quantitative longitudinal · Planned
Paper 1 · Completed
Unveiling Hidden Poverty: A Theoretical Framework
What is hidden poverty? — theoretical–conceptual.
Builds the five-dimension framework (economic, social, empowerment, psychosocial, political-symbolic) and argues that invisibility is a relational and symbolic condition — hidden poverty as something the system produces, not a residue of mismeasurement. Does not measure, map, or operationalise the condition; it constructs the lens the other three papers apply.
Paper 2 · In draft
Mapping Institutional Invisibility in Bogotá
Where does the system fail to see it? — quantitative, Sisbén IV + ILSIS, 1.7M households.
Constructs an institutional invisibility gradient across three non-recognition filters (statistical gap, asset-debt trap, education expenditure pressure), showing empirically that non-recognition is a matter of design, not error. Identifies four focus territories — Teusaquillo, Los Cedros, Galerías, Quinta Paredes — as the zones of highest non-recognition concentration, and explicitly leaves the psychological, social and symbolic dimensions to qualitative research — the opening Paper 3 takes up.
Paper 3 · In design
Mapping Hidden Poverty: Lived Experience and the Rationalities of Concealment in Bogotá
How is it lived from within? — mixed methods, participatory fieldwork + descriptive spatial analysis.
Uses Paper 2’s focus territories as the entry point for fieldwork, triangulating spatial data with household narratives. Introduces a new theoretical contribution — invisibility as practice: not only a structural condition but active, everyday work households do to protect dignity and status, operationalising Goffman (1963) empirically for the first time in this context.
Paper 4 · Planned
Produced by Growth: The Economic Mechanisms Generating Hidden Poverty in Bogotá
Why is it generated? — quantitative longitudinal, Encuesta Multipropósito, multiple rounds.
Identifies three economic mechanisms — the mortgage debt cycle, the education-expenditure trap, and upward-skewed labour informality — showing that the same assets the development model promotes as routes out of poverty are simultaneously the mechanisms that generate hidden poverty. Closes the thesis’s explanatory arc: the model that produces the condition (P4), that the system fails to recognise (P2), that is lived in silence (P3), and that the theoretical framework anticipated (P1).
This page is a working outline and will be updated as Papers 2–4 progress. See the Research page for the full conceptual framework and methodology.
