A Meta-analysis of Studies in the Field of Informal Settlement in Iran

The existence of various facilities and infrastructures in the cities has caused many villagers to leave their places of residence and migrate to cities. This is while the high price of land and housing forces the newly arrived immigrants to build shelters on the outskirts of the cities, away from the eyes of the authorities and without obtaining permission from the trustees, which consequently causes many problems for the authorities in the field of services as well as the marginalized people. This research is based on the meta-analysis method, which is a systematic way to achieve these goals with the statistical analysis of quantitative findings from studies related to a research problem and aims to identify and categorize research articles written in the field of marginalization in geographical scientific research journals. Therefore, after searching and identifying the articles that have directly addressed the mentioned topic in recent years, understanding their approaches and nature, to examine the structure of the articles, including methodology, indicators, sampling, data collection, and analysis methods, the present study analyzed the positive and negative aspects of the obtained results. In the framework of this method, at first, the word informal settlement and other words close to it in terms of meaning, such as shacks, marginalization, and illegal settlements, were searched in Persian libraries, centers, and academic banks, and the most relevant studies were selected for research purposes. The inclusion criteria of the studies included conducting research in Iran, publishing the study in the Persian language, and their full text. The results of the research indicate that all the articles were a type of theory testing and did not lead to theory building. Although some studies have presented very good and new models and suggestions, according to the nature of the research, they cannot be classified as fundamental and theory-building studies.