Social Contracts And Informal Workers In The Global South

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline. Illustrating how current social contracts may be considered inadequate, irrelevant or unjust, Social Contracts and Informal Workers in the Global South draws on the accounts of informal workers to advocate for radically new conceptualizations of state-society, capital-labour and state-capital-labour relations characterised by recognition, responsiveness and reciprocity.

Part of the Critical Perspectives on Work and Employment series, this edited collection brings together contributions from leading international scholars to initiate an important dialogue between labour process analysis and scholarship on work in the Global South. This book characterises the forms of work and labour process that characterise globalising capitalism today and addresses core analytical concerns within Labour Process Theory and research on work in the South. It explores how a wide range of production relations in the Global South, ranging from formal to informal employment and self-employment, are embedded in wider social relations of gender, caste, religion and ethnicity, and are related to wider patterns of commodification and resistance. Drawing on cutting-edge research, the book's chapters consider a diverse range of working situations, covering migrant workers in the Middle East, commercial surrogacy work in India and cooperative garment workers in Argentina. In offering a novel reading of the political economy of work in the Global South and shedding light on lesser-considered fields of work and worker organization, this volume will provide new insights for making sense of the changing world of work for students, scholars, labour activists and practitioners alike.

From one of the leading policy experts of our time, an urgent rethinking of how we can better support each other to thrive Whether we realize it or not, all of us participate in the social contract every day through mutual obligations among our family, community, place of work, and fellow citizens. Caring for others, paying taxes, and benefiting from public services define the social contract that supports and binds us together as a society. Today, however, our social contract has been broken by changing gender roles, technology, new models of work, aging, and the perils of climate change. Minouche Shafik takes us through stages of life we all experience—raising children, getting educated, falling ill, working, growing old—and shows how a reordering of our societies is possible. Drawing on evidence and examples from around the world, she shows how every country can provide citizens with the basics to have a decent life and be able to contribute to society. But we owe each other more than this. A more generous and inclusive society would also share more risks collectively and ask everyone to contribute for as long as they can so that everyone can fulfill their potential. What We Owe Each Other identifies the key elements of a better social contract that recognizes our interdependencies, supports and invests more in each other, and expects more of individuals in return. Powerful, hopeful, and thought-provoking, What We Owe Each Other provides practical solutions to current challenges and demonstrates how we can build a better society—together.

The Global Informal Workforce is a fresh look at the informal economy around the world and its impact on the macroeconomy. The book covers interactions between the informal economy, labor and product markets, gender equality, fiscal institutions and outcomes, social protection, and financial inclusion. Informality is a widespread and persistent phenomenon that affects how fast economies can grow, develop, and provide decent economic opportunities for their populations. The COVID-19 pandemic has helped to uncover the vulnerabilities of the informal workforce.

All over the world countries face the challenge of inadequate social security coverage for workers without an employment contact. In countries of the global south, this phenomenon is a natural consequence of large informal economies. Countries in the global north increasingly witness the same issue, due to growing labour market flexibility (flex contracts, dependent self-employment, digitization of labour). In this book authors from both hemispheres exchange insights, experiments and practices with the intention of finding better ways to deal with the social security challenges facing workers.

Globalisation and rapid technological change have radically transformed labour markets, affecting the lives and prospects of billions of workers. Those in the informal economy, the vast bulk of the workforce in the Global South, have been bearing the brunt. This report is for policy makers seeking to address the factors that make those workers in informality vulnerable. It provides them with a distinctive cross-country comparison of recent informality trends, and how they were affected by the recent crises such as the COVID-19 epidemic, casting light on the impacts of sub-contracting models in global value chains, and digital labour platforms. It argues that an inclusive recovery and greater resilience to future crises necessitate that many countries renew their social contracts, to make them more inclusive of informal workers and their families.

This landmark volume brings together leading scholars in the field to investigate recent conceptual shifts, research findings and policy debates on the informal economy as well as future challenges and directions for research and policy. Well over half of the global workforce and the vast majority of the workforce in developing countries work in the informal economy, and in countries around the world new forms of informal employment are emerging. Yet the informal workforce is not well understood, remains undervalued and is widely stigmatised. Contributors to the volume bridge a range of disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, development economics, law, political science, social policy, sociology, statistics, urban planning and design. The Informal Economy Revisited also focuses on specific groups of informal workers, including home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers, to provide a grounded insight into disciplinary debates. Ultimately, the book calls for a paradigm shift in how the informal economy is perceived to reflect the realities of informal work in the Global South, as well as the informal practices of the state and capital, not just labour. The Informal Economy Revisited is the culmination of 20 years of pioneering work by WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing), a global network of researchers, development practitioners and organisations of informal workers in 90 countries. Researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and advocates will all find this book an invaluable guide to the significance and complexities of the informal economy, and its role in today’s globalised economy. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429200724, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Informal Workers and Collective Action features nine cases of collective action to improve the status and working conditions of informal workers. Adrienne E. Eaton, Susan J. Schurman, and Martha A. Chen set the stage by defining informal work and describing the types of organizations that represent the interests of informal workers and the lessons that may be learned from the examples presented in the book. Cases from a diverse set of countries—Brazil, Cambodia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Georgia, Liberia, South Africa, Tunisia, and Uruguay—focus on two broad types of informal workers: "waged" workers, including port workers, beer promoters, hospitality and retail workers, domestic workers, low-skilled public sector workers, and construction workers; and self-employed workers, including street vendors, waste recyclers, and minibus drivers.These cases demonstrate that workers and labor organizations around the world are rediscovering the lessons of early labor organizers on how to aggregate individuals' sense of injustice into forms of collective action that achieve a level of power that can yield important changes in their work and lives. Informal Workers and Collective Action makes a strong argument that informal workers, their organizations, and their campaigns represent the leading edge of the most significant change in the global labor movement in more than a century.Contributors Gocha Aleksandria, Georgian Trade Union Confederation Martha A. Chen, Harvard University and WIEGO Sonia Maria Dias, WIEGO and Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil Adrienne E. Eaton, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey Mary Evans, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey Janice Fine, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey Mary Goldsmith, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco Daniel Hawkins, National Trade Union School of Colombia Elza Jgerenaia, Labor and Employment Policy Department for the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs, Republic of Georgia Stephen J. King, Georgetown University Allison J. Petrozziello, UN Women and the Center for Migration Observation and Social Development Pewee Reed, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Republic of Liberia Sahra Ryklief, International Federation of Workers' Education Associations Susan J. Schurman, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey Vera Alice Cardoso Silva, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil Milton Weeks, Devin Corporation