Marginalized people have always been at the center of AKATIGA’s research for more than two decades. The social and political dynamics surrounding AKATIGA’s development from time to time also shape AKATIGA’s research direction which explores the problems faced by the poor. AKATIGA realizes the need for a framework to capture the reality of poverty more clearly and deeply.

Based on this, AKATIGA’s studies always highlight four major themes, namely:

• agrarian
• labor
• small-micro business, and
• governance.

The four themes represent resources that should be accessible to the poor in order to get out of poverty, namely access to land, employment opportunities, capital and the economy, and to the political process. By tracing and critical analysis, AKATIGA tries to unravel problems, evaluate policies, and offer recommendations that can bring about change for the poor. We realize that there are interrelationships between the issues that are the focus of AKATIGA, so that a number of studies by AKATIGA have also tried to link some of these issues.