ShodhPatra: International Journal of Science and Humanities

Household Resilience and Socio-Economic Marginalisation in the Border Villages of Jammu and Kashmir: A Sociological Study of Livelihoods, Services and Welfare Access

People living in border villages in Jammu and Kashmir suffer vulnerabilities as they deal with livelihood instability, uneven access to services, disruptions linked to security issues, and limited reach of institutions. This research paper lays out a quantitative sociological framework for investigating the link between household resilience and socio economic marginalisation in four border blocks: R.S. Bishnah, Pura, Balakote and Mendhar. Using a simulated academic dataset with labels of 400 households an index construction is done for four indices namely, Household Resilience, Socio-Economic Marginalisation, Welfare Access and Service Deprivation. A combination of descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations, chi-square tests, Pearson correlations and multiple regression are used to analyze how income, livelihood diversification, welfare access, service access and community support shape household adaptation. The simulated findings indicate a mean monthly family income of INR 25,799, a mean resilience score of 55.04 and a mean marginalisation score of 51.64. There is a positive relationship between welfare access and resilience (r=0.465); further, marginalisation is positively linked to service deprivation (r=0.661). The variation in household resilience explained by our regression model is 58.9%. The findings suggest that the resilience of border villages is not merely an economic outcome; rather, it is a social process that is shaped by access to public services, local networks and institutional inclusion.