Informal Labour Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

SDG 8 calls for promoting 'sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all'. Even as it highlights the importance of labour rights for all, it also makes visible some significant tensions. We note, for example, that despite many critiques of narrow economic measures of growth, the focus here remains on GDP and per capita growth. This is problematic, we argue, because the GDP productive boundary excludes much of social reproductive work. This puts SDG8 in tension with SDG 5 which calls for the recognition of the value of unpaid care and domestic work. There has been a significant increase in the rate of working women in the formal and informal sector. However, there has not been a subsequent gender shift in the doing of social reproductive work. In this paper we argue SDG 8's focus on decent work and economic growth is inadequate; that productive employment and decent work for all men and women by 2030 needs to take into account the value and costs of social reproduction. We trace key historical debates on work to argue that both gender and labour rights have to underpin SDG 8 if its promise of inclusive, sustainable and decent work is to be realized.

- by and +1
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- DeGrowth, Decent work, Social reproduction, Informal Labour

This paper tries to understand how a Global Production Network like that of Zara dominates the global retail industry by applying strategies to monopolize fast fashion. In this paper the endeavour is to understand how a global retail chain like that of Inditex has been able to retain its leading position by creating a vertically integrated supply chain which is controlled by a centralized production hub in Spain. Using the framework of the Global Production Network, it has also tried to explore what may be the implications on workers across the world when they are integrated into such networks

- by Shivangi Kaushik
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- Development Studies, Gender, Informal Labour

This article explores the central role of formalisation in the history and functioning of international economic law (IEL). IEL, in constituting and managing a 'modern' world economy, has relied on what we call 'the dream of formality'. This dream gives a sense of internal coherence and future totality to IEL. It enables IEL to claim awareness and progressive inclusion of socioeconomic and legal relations outside the 'formal' modern economy, while enabling a regime of differentiation of the so-called 'surplus'often racialisedpopulation. In a world where 'informality' is the norm and 'formality' the exception, formalisation's colonial origins have evolved into a fully-fledged regime of social management and value extraction. This regime has embedded itself in international labour law and human rights, as well as in areas of IEL such as Aid for Trade and Global Value Chains. Building on contemporary debates on racial and post-colonial capitalism, we focus on Colombia's informal economy to illustrate the elusiveness of the dream of formality, and how current exercises of othering underpin today's practices of 'racialisation otherwise'. Our question, then, is: what would IEL look like if it did not follow the dream of formality but instead embraced the challenge of sustaining life?

- by Donatella Alessandrini and +2
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- Development Studies, International Law, Colombia, International organizations
- by Carlos G Ospino
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- Informal Economy, Informal Labour

The study carried in the three states of Bihar, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh has brought out several interesting issues regarding home-based work. Today almost all the home- based trades are either challenged for their vulnerability in the fast changing regularised economy or highly marginalised and lost in the vast economic world. However, home-based jobs and the voices of home-based workers are hopefully not entirely unnoticed.

- by Jyotsna Sivaramayya and +2
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- Indian studies, Informal Economy, Informal Sector, Homebased Work

En este articulo se reflejan las trayectorias de trabajo de personas que realizan sus actividades en el sector denominado informal, en el espacio publico de la Ciudad de Mexico. La investigacion enfoca, desde una perspectiva de genero, las identidades, experiencias y significados construidos durante el proceso de envejecimiento (visto como un todo), y en el desarrollo de las trayectorias laborales de las personas. En lo conceptual, parte del enfoque de curso de vida, principalmente desde los conceptos de turning point y timing ; mientras en la estrategia metodologica se opta por el uso de entrevistas cualitativas en profundidad, utilizando la tecnica de historia de vida, y un analisis del tipo hermeneutico. Finalmente, los resultados arrojados resaltan un contraste por genero en la conformacion de las trayectorias e identidades laborales, derivado de aspectos objetivos y subjetivos, que intervienen al desplegar agencias, y experimentar el trabajo y la vida familiar y afectiva.

- by María Azucena Feregrino Basurto
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- Performance Studies, Gender, Public Space, Género

En este artículo se reflejan las trayectorias de trabajo de personas que realizan sus actividades en el sector denominado informal, en el espacio público de la Ciudad de México. La investigación se enfoca en conocer, desde una perspectiva de género, las identidades, experiencias y significados construidos durante el proceso de envejecimiento (visto como un todo), y en el desarrollo de las trayectorias laborales de las personas. En lo conceptual, parte del enfoque de curso de vida, principalmente desde los conceptos de turning point y timing; mientras en la estrategia metodológica se opta por el uso de entrevistas cualitativas en profundidad, desde la técnica de historia de vida, y un análisis del tipo hermenéutico. Finalmente, los resultados arrojados resaltan un contraste por género en la conformación de las trayectorias e identidades laborales, derivado de aspectos objetivos y subjetivos, que intervienen a la hora de desplegar agencias, y experimentar el trabajo y la vida familiar y afectiva.

- by María Azucena Feregrino Basurto and +1
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- Gender, Urban Studies, Urban Sociology, Public Space

As per Annual report (2009-10) published by Ministry of Labor and Employment , roughly 94% are employed in unorganized or informal sector out of which ~60% are employed in agricultural sector, ~6% in construction and remaining are employed in manufacturing and service sectors. The report published by ILO (2012) claims that six countries (India, Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam, Pakistan and Philippines) account for three-fourths of total informal employment. A general consensus is that in India, labor from historical perspective like most primitive economies was predominantly informal in nature with majority of labor engaged in agricultural sector. In that regard, Informal sector has always been there, and has existed far longer than formal sector. It’s also reasonable to claim that all workers were predominantly informal in nature until they raised their voice for formal recognition, legal protection and regulation, which is what led to creation of a formal workforce. In wake of this, one is compelled to ask a question as to why India never managed to get rid of informal sector and in-turn managed to fully formalize its workforce. The question gets puzzling esp. when asked in context of six decades of industrialization led growth post independence, for historically industrialization has created more jobs in the formal sector elsewhere. Then one is bound to be intrigued to ask as to what was so peculiar in India’s industrialization led growth that it failed to formalize a reasonable size of its informal labor. I thereby attempt to identify and explain factors causing the “large size of informal sector” via posing an indirect question as to “What factors played a part to prevent India from formalizing its workforce during industrialization?” An answer to this question would in turn provide us answer to original question.

- by Bhupinder Singh
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- Comparative Labour Studies, Informal Labour

Η διπλωματική εργασία με τίτλο «ΑΤΥΠΗ ΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ, ΓΕΩΓΡΑΦΙΑ – ΤΑΣΕΙΣ – ΝΟΜΟΘΕΤΙΚΕΣ ΡΥΘΜΙΣΕΙΣ» εκπονήθηκε στον τομέα Κτηματολογίου, Φωτογραμμετρίας και Χαρτογραφίας του τμήματος Αγρονόμων και Τοπογράφων Μηχανικών του Αριστοτελείου Πανεπιστήμιου Θεσσαλονίκης από τον φοιτητή Τσαβδάρογλου Χαράλαμπο υπό την επίβλεψη της καθηγήτριας κ. Ελευθερίας Καρνάβου.

- by Haris Tsavdaroglou
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- Informaly Economy-Informality, Urban Informality, Informal Labour, Informality

One of the key challenges to the study of Brazilian capitalist development has been how to interpret the survival of ‘backward’ forms of exploitation which, in combination with surplus value generated through higher degrees of worker productivity, often form the basis of the most dynamic economic sectors. This combination of rates of exploitation in single production chains has long been a characteristic of Brazil’s insertion in the global economy. However, in the context of the ‘new consensus’ around export-oriented development, there has certainly been a revival of surplus value extracted by means of super-exploitation (as defined by Ruy Mauro Marini) in (certain) labour-intensive stages of production, as well as forms of unfree labour tantamount to slavery. At issue for the Brazilian labour movement is how to interpret and confront this so-called developmental ‘lag’; or alternatively, how to struggle for working class unity in a scenario which (despite falling unemployment rates, etc.) continues to be shaped by the neoliberal crisis of labour which struck in the 1990s. This paper reflects on the struggle for unity amongst Brazilian workers on the issue of the grounds of Brazilian development in the movement against the FTAA.

- by Amanda Latimer
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- Globalization, Marxism, Labour Process, International Trade

This report discusses the methodologies of labour force surveys, the assessment of informal employment and the structures of social protection (social insurance, social assistance and protection floors) in 4 Arab countries. This report... more

- by samir AITA
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- Lebanon, Social Protection, Health insurance, Morocco
- by Judy Fudge
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- Labour Law, Precarious Employment, Informal Labour, Labour Market Regulation

This paper examines how unions build worker power for day labourers in South Korea's construction industry to interrogate the relationship between informality, the construction industry and the organized labor. Drawing upon in-depth case studies of three regional branches of the Korean Construction Workers Union (KCWU), we find that each branch cultivates distinct forms of worker power-associational, structural, and symbolic power-to hold capital accountable. Construction day labourers organize despite the regulatory challenges that informalize their employment conditions in the context of widespread legal and illegal outsourcing. We argue that the crux of informality is capital's ability to bypass existing labor laws and regulations through the elaborately multi-tired subcontracting structure. Our case study shows multiple approaches to addressing capital's attempt to elude its responsibility around and through legal loopholes through union power-building strategies, rather than demanding stronger public intervention from the state. Each form of worker power has enabled the KCWU to secure and enforce creative collective agreements that establish some uniform standards regarding job quality and job security, although their scope of influence varies.

- by Dagna Rams
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- Informal Labour, Rio de Janeiro, Landfills, Garbage

This book's main theme is the study of informal work in Brazil. It combines sociological theory, historical analysis and statistical data, to provide an overview of the configuration of the processes of informalization at work. It still tries to be a contribution that helps to understand the persistence of social inequality in the labor market.
ISBN: 9788598885636. P.:280

In the contemporary global economy, new technologies are growing the ‘reserve army’ of labour, while the wage-system is becoming increasingly unable to meet workers’ ‘basic needs’. Bernstein’s concept of ‘classes of labour’ refers to the growing proportion of the world’s population that is now compelled to reproduce itself through various forms of petty production and wage-labour that is increasingly scarce, informal and precarious. Rather than more ‘visible’ locations in global production networks, this paper focuses on the under-researched majority of labourers who have little structural or associational power. Drawing on fieldwork in India, the paper seeks out the social, spatial and temporal forms of labour’s collective action by analysing spatial patterns of reproduction and forms of control. Inflected with the agency of both capital and labour, these ‘local labour control regimes’ are shown to vary across two contrasting ‘reproduction zones’: a commuting zone that links villages to nearby cities, and a circulation zone that links remote villages to a distant city. The paper analyses how collective action varies across the two ‘zones’, and considers the possibilities for scaling up, consolidating and extending class struggle.

- by Jonathan Pattenden
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- Class, India, Informal Labour, Karnataka

In the South Asian context, the importance of male protection and provision lead women to comply with, rather than challenge, male dominance. Yet, even as social structures constrain the actions of women more so than those of men,
they allow spaces where women can fulfill their own and their families’ needs. Based on case studies of different groups of women engaged in the garment and construction sectors and those who had given up wage work, I argue in this paper that women’s ability to shift power relations at home depended
on the kind of paid employment they were engaged in and its social recognition. The agency of women who had given up wage work and those in independent paid employment was shaped by different factors. The differences in their familial and kinship roles, stage-of-life identities, the
class position of their households, the ability to mobilize their social networks and access to earnings impacted intra- and extra-household relations and women’s ability to shift these relations.

- by Sakshi Khurana
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- Gender Studies, Gender Equality, Domestic Space, Informal Economy

This research paper discusses labour force surveys' methods, labour market characteristics, the assessment of informal employment and its mirroring in the social protection systems (social insurance and social assistance) in 4 Arab... more

- by samir AITA
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- Social Insurance, Lebanon, Social Protection, Health insurance
- by Rebecca Bowers
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- Industrial And Labor Relations, Sociology, Gender Studies, Social Anthropology

A walk through the lanes of Daftaripara, the backyard of Calcutta’s publishing industry known for its concentration of bindery works, printing presses and other related small-scale enterprises. “There is another Kolkata within Kolkata/ Learn to walk through it and see” (Sankha Ghosh). A loud soliloquy from my current project: Visual stories on life, labour and the city. Join the walk and visit www.daftaripara.org

- by Abhijit Roy
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- Book History, History of the Book, Urban Studies, Work and Labour
- by Benjamin Temkin
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- Geography, Informal Labour, Informalidad Laboral

Por decorrência da Covid-19, estima-se um aumento na taxa de desocupação de 12% nos últimos seis meses, resultando em mais 12,4 milhões de pessoas na rua. Esse contingente funciona como reserva de mão de obra barata disponível à... more

- by Silvia Pinheiro
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- Informal Labour, Modern Slavery, Women Work and Labour, Slavery Rio de Janeiro
- by Francesca Coin and +2
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- Informal Economy, Digital Economy, Informal Labour, Cashless Society

Objective: In this study, we try to study the pattern of employment, earnings, social security benefits of self-employed, contract workers and casual labour. Methods/Statistical analysis: This study is a comparative analysis of India and Punjab. The study is based on secondary time series data and collected data was calculated by simple percentages, Annual Average Growth Rate (AAGR). The data has been taken from the report published on Employment-Unemployment survey, 2016 by Labour Bureau of India. Findings: The level of informality has been more in the rural areas for both India and Punjab in case of casual labour. The situation of casual female workers seemed to be more vulnerable than another activity status. The condition of informal labour poses a great challenge for the government to formulate a decent policy for them. Self-employed are more in rural India than in urban India whereas the situation is opposite for Punjab. The urban areas of Punjab have more self-employed than rural parts of Punjab. Females and casual labour both again were the worst sufferer as more than half of the total casual labour and females earned less than Rs. 5,000 p.m. only. Informal workers have the least access to social security benefits. Application/Improvements: The study also tries to explain the current situation employment, wages and social security of informal labour at both gender level and rural-urban level.

- by IJED isee
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- Informal Labour

Terry Irving was invited to address the Sydney Historical Research Network in March 2017, as part of a session on 'Histories of Class Now'. The other speakers were Hannah Forsyth and Elizabeth Humphrys. Each of them was asked to say something about their current research. This is a revised version of his address, followed by a note on sources.

- by Terry Irving
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- Marxism, Identity politics, Australian History, Radical Democracy

Sex work has been identified as an important dimension of the ‘survival circuits’ which have developed in the majority world in the context of neo-liberalisation, as a response to the deepening misery of the Global South. Yet while much research has explored the role of sex work in contexts of ‘neo-liberal’ regimes of capital accumulation, few have paid sustained attention to sex work in regimes which are not purely ‘neo-liberal’. Drawing on data with sex workers across 10 cities in Argentina gathered between 2007 and 2014, this article examines multiple spaces of sex workers’ lives, including the workplace, the home, and the state in a context of what has been dubbed ‘neo-developmentalism’. It argues that sex work contributes multiple forms of value and subsidies for the state and capital. First, sex work provides a subsidy in the form of the provision of ‘employment’; second, female sex workers provide unwaged reproductive labour in the family; and third, in the labour movement. Yet despite these three contributions to the reproduction of the working class and therefore of capital, the state undermines sex workers’ capacities through violence and sustained repression. The article concludes that the neo-developmentalism has led to ‘uneven divestment of the state’ in the reproduction of particular sections of the working class, namely those outside the formal and ‘productive’ sectors.

- by Kate Hardy
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- Gender Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Argentina, Sex Work

This paper examines the effect of the COVID-19 shock on the Egyptian economy using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. We contribute to the literature in several ways. First, using a CGE model, we try to distinguish between supply and demand effects of COVID19 on the Egyptian economy. Second, using a dynamic model, we examine the key differences between the effects of the pandemic on the economy in both the short and long terms. Third, we identify how the pandemic and the policy responses of the government had a heterogeneous impact on different economic agents and sectors. Fourth, we modify the model to include the informal labor that was highly affected by the pandemic. We calibrate the mode using the social accounting matrix of Egypt of 2014/2015. Our main findings show to what extent the Egyptian economy has been relatively vulnerable to the world economy with the decline in most of its foreign currency sources. Yet, while the economy is negatively affected in the short term by the pandemic, most of the effects are temporary and vanish in the long run. In terms of the policy response, increasing public current consumption without sectoral targeting has positive welfare effects but hurts economic growth and employment. In contrast, increasing public investment increases growth, welfare, and employment in the short run thanks to more externalities. In terms of social policies, financial transfers to households/domestic business agents and irregular workers increase private consumption but negatively affects economic growth and employment with a deteriorated fiscal stance of the government. Finally, the monetary stimulus package has significant growth, employment, and well-being effects compared to fiscal one since the latter raises the cost of production because of the crowding-out effect, while the former reduces it.

Home is the place of work for the home-based workers. Therefore the major work related concerns of the home-based workers are always centred around their home and habitat, including access to basic services, public infrastructure and most importantly the provisions of child-care facility at the community level. The present study attempts to unravel this complex relationship between of home, habitat and work of home-based workers live in Khajuri, a poorer settlement in the eastern part of Delhi.

Building on biographical records of 810 Shelter users and interviews conducted with 70 homeless and vulnerable persons and 20 professionals in the area of social protection, this paper examines the employment situation of homeless people in Moldova in the context of the post-Soviet transformation. The paper maintains that most homeless people are excluded from the formal sector of the labour market. Therefore, they are engaged in various informal economic activities which help them survive and integrate them in informal support networks. Drawing on neo-Marxist and Honneth’s social recognition theories, the article argues that informal work in which homeless people are involved reduces the ability of employees to control the labour process and their autonomy to the employer. Thus, the informal labour activities further reproduce the precarious social status of the homeless person and perpetuate her social and economic vulnerability.

- by Petru Negură
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- Homelessness, Moldova, Urban Informality, Informal Labour

- by ayesha datta and +2
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- Women's Studies, Irregular/Informal Settlements Studies, Home Economics, Work and Labour

Sociologia del Lavoro 2/2019 -- deadline for long abstracts September 15, 2018

- by Francesca Coin and +2
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- Sociology, Economic Sociology, Sociology of Work, Sociology of Money

For decades Nicaraguans have migrated to Costa Rica seeking life improvement. A large part of this migration is constituted outside the law, which makes it irregular. Due to their legal status, irregular Nicaraguan migrants are more likely to work in Costa Rica's informal economy, where lack of social protection and vulnerability of exploitation are common situations. In order to grant social protection and proper labour standards to these irregular migrant workers, formalising informal wage work may seem as a beneficial response. Nevertheless, this formalisation can have repercussions on irregular migrant workers by closing the life betterment they found in the informal economy, thus making this process a paradox. Formalisation then offers the possibility of interrelating informal wage employment and irregular migration. Considering the legalist and the structuralist schools of thought, this paper looks at such interrelation through causality, formalisation attempts and hypothetical issues. Among several conclusions, it is noticed a limited involvement of Nicaraguan migrant workers in formalisation and decision making processes in Costa Rica, which should be further addressed. In all, this case study serves as an example of how phenomena and processes within SouthSouth migration concerning informality should be approached contextually and holistically.

- by Raquel Alvarez Rodríguez
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- Irregular Migration, Labour Studies, Costa Rica, Informal Economy

Ferhunde Dilara Demir's interview with József Böröcz

- by József Böröcz
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- European History, Sociology, Economic Sociology, European Studies
- by Benjamin Temkin
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- Informal Labour, Informalidad Laboral

This article is an attempt to understand the heterogeneous nature of home-based cashew workers in Kerala. The article uses narrative approach to illustrate the lived experiences of the home-based workers. The evidence from the field study in Kollam district reveals that the majority of the workers engaged in the home-based processing, voluntarily or involuntarily, are women. The home-based processing is considered as an additional option to earn income by these workers. As a result, despite the ban on cottage processing of cashew, it is operating in a clandestine manner. The study shows that the enhancement of individual and collective capabilities of the women in the informal sector requires an understanding of their multiple identities, as well as an acknowledgement of the existing gender relations and social structure.

This article addresses the topic of the current issue of the journal (processes of poverty and social exclusion) by (re)framing the working class position of dispossessed Roma through a case study conducted in Romanian localities. The situation of the Roma is due to the fact that they stand at an intersection: the product of a combination of their precarious spatial position, the nature of the labor that they have access to and the racialization of both poverty and Roma ethnicity. Moreover, this position is shaped by the relationship of the Roma to capital; the Roma being the group most adversely affected by de-industrialization, deregulation of the labor and housing market, and through the re-regulation of property relationships; in particular real estate goods. The latter processes produce poverty and social exclusion, among other things, because they increase the unevenness of development across regions, counties, localities and within settlements, and lead to the creation of insecure and underpaid jobs or structural unemployment. Dispossessed of the means of production, and also of (state) support for adequate housing (one of the resources for the social reproduction of the labor force), the impoverished Roma take up poorly paid formal employment or engage in insecure informal labor either domestically or abroad; a phenomenon that aggravates their exploitation as a working class undergoing a severe process of precarization. The analysis in this paper is based on the empirical results of qualitative research conducted between 2012-2014 in several localities in Romania under the umbrella of the contextual inquiry Faces and Causes of Marginalization of the Roma in Local Settings. Going beyond the initial theoretical frame of that research, which addressed the role of ethnic relations to other factors that affect the inclusion/exclusion of the Roma, this article responds to the need to better understand these processes in terms of how the system adversely impacts dispossessed Roma via their exploitation as workers whose precarization is a result of their position at the crossroads of spatial deprivation, labor-related destitution and racialization.

Going into the second phase of my fieldwork, I planned to go to Java this time, beginning in Surabaya on the 20th of January to follow a lead I picked up in Bali. I planned to spend a week there and move more into central Java, Yogyakarta, in order to observe the ride-hailing and payments scene in a region I have not been to yet. After a week there as well I planned to finalise at Jakarta, where I have some academic/media contacts who I could make use of. My return back to Singapore was planned to be on the 9th of February, totalling a fieldwork of 3 weeks like last time in Bali. This round, my core objective would be to get ahold of some drivers who participated in protests/demonstrations against their own companies (Grab/Gojek); from my readings/interviews so far I believed Java was the ideal island throughout Indonesia to shoot for that target.
Plans changed slightly when I got an unprecedented video call request just a few days before leaving for Surabaya, from a driver I met in Bali. It was Wayan Juli, the cousin of Gede (a very helpful interlocutor I met during my last phase in Bali). I had the chance to sit down with Wayan for an interview back in October and we kept in touch through Whatsapp and Instagram ever since. It was the first time he was calling me though, visibly excited to invite me for his daughter’s graduation at end of the month (31st January). When I mentioned him I was coming to Indonesia again this weekend, planning to spend a week or so in Surabaya, he was quite genuinely insistent for me to drop by Bali again, given I was so close. So I reconsidered my schedule and cut short Surabaya to 4 days and Jogja to 3, instead of the original plan of spending a week in both. I bought a flight from Jogja to Denpasar then another from Denpasar to Jakarta, letting me both attend Wayan’s ceremony on the 31st of January and be in Jakarta on time for my pre-paid accommodation reservation starting February 1st. I was glad of this detour, as not only I would get to see Wayan and Gede again, but it would be the first time I would be invited to stay with one of my interlocutors, since Armin in Bintan during 2018. I was looking forward to be able to experience the daily life of Wayan at his village, firsthand.
Now with a more circuitous plan at hand, I started detailing what I expected to achieve/observe/encounter at each location. It is difficult to put checkboxes next to fieldwork targets, as the field may unravel itself in a very different fashion than one may even educatedly guess, but I did have the basic objectives of: be able to meet my lead from Bali in Surabaya and prompt him to be a gatekeeper for me in the city in order for me to meet local pengojek who were involved in protests against their companies; observe the local transportation and payments scene in Jogjakarta and take a long Grab/Gojek trip to Borobudur where I would be most likely able to have a long conversation with the driver; meet with Gede and Wayan in Bali, be able to make it up to Karangasem and the graduation ceremony, while ideally meeting more friends of Wayan that could be interlocutors; meet with a Grab or Gojek corporate employee in Jakarta, while observing the new developments in urban transportation, such as the MRT and the Transjakarta integration with Gojek and Grab. Looking back, these general targets and milestones allowed me to navigate the field with an open mind, not an empty mind, and I could say I achieved them during these three flexuous weeks across Java and Bali.

- by Dr. Onat Kibaroğlu
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- Indonesian Culture, Indonesian History, Indonesian Studies, Labour history
- by Alessandra Mezzadri
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- Financial Crisis of 2008/2009, Informal Labour, Garment Industry