The Political Economy Of Work In The Global South

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.

This book provides a focus on some of the main markers and challenges that are at the core of the study of structural transformations in contemporary capitalism and their implications for labour in the Global South. It examines the diverse perspectives and regional and social variations that characterise labour relations as a result of the uneven development which is an important facet of the intensification of capitalist accumulation.. The book provides important insights into the impact of the crises of capitalism on the wellbeing of labour at different historical junctures. Some of the issues covered by it include the conditions of work, and the changing composition of laboring classes and/or working people. The chapters also throw light on the multiple trajectories in the development of labour relations and employment in the Global South, especially after the ascendancy and domination of neoliberal finance capitalism. Some of the major aspects considered by the essays include the decentering of production and development of global value systems, crisis of social reproduction, and the rising informalisation of work.

This book presents a new theory explaining underdevelopment in the global South and tests whether financial inputs, the government-business-media (GBM) complex and spatiotemporal influences drive human development. Despite the entrance of emerging powers and new forms of aid, trade and investment, international political-economic practices still support well-established systems of capital accumulation, to the detriment of the global South. Global asymmetrical accumulation is maintained by ‘affective’ (consent-forming hegemonic practices) and ‘infrastructural’ (uneven economic exchanges) labours and by power networks. The message for developing countries is that ‘robust’ GBMs can facilitate human development and development is constrained by spatiotemporal limitations. This work theorizes that aid and foreign direct investment should be viewed with caution and that in the global South these investments should not automatically be assumed to be drivers of development.

Against the background of the global economic crisis since 2007/2008 and increasing inequality across the world, the Global South has experienced widespread, large-scale industrial action, including in countries such as China, Brazil, India and South Africa, which had been hailed as the new growth engines of the global political economy as part of the so-called BRICS. This volume systematically evaluates how the new forms of labour mobilization witnessed in the past ten years responded to the predominance of the informality-precarity complex of industrial relations and what conclusions can be drawn for potentially successful strategies against exploitation in the future. Can we identify a convergence of new approaches across the Global South, or do we witness an ongoing fragmentation of actors, models and strategies? In addressing this question, consideration is given to issues of class as well as gender and race. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Globalizations.

This ground-breaking Handbook broadens empirical and theoretical understandings of work, work relations, and workers. It advances a global, intersectional labour studies agenda, laying the foundations for the politically emancipatory project of decolonising the political economy of work.

This book offers an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to thinking about inequality, and to understanding how inequality is produced and reproduced in the global South. Without the safety net of the various Northern welfare states, inequality in the global South is not merely a socio-economic problem, but an existential threat to the social contract that underpins the democratic state and society itself. Only a response that is firmly grounded in the context of the global South can hope to address this problem. This collection brings together scholars from across the globe, with a particular focus on the global South, to address broad thematic areas such as the conceptual and methodological challenges of measuring inequality; the political economy of inequality in the global South; inequality in work, households and the labour market; and inequalities in land, spaces and cities. The book concludes by suggesting alternatives for addressing inequality in the global South and around the world. The pioneering ideas and theories put forward by this volume make it essential reading for students and researchers of global inequality across the fields of sociology, economics, law, politics, global studies and development studies.

This edited volume highlights cascading effects of the pandemic and lockdown on informal economies of varied countries in the Global South. Uneven development after colonization, imperialism, and externally influenced conflict have caused many countries in the formally colonized or semi-occupied countries in the world to lag behind in wealth accumulation, investments in manufacturing, and technology. The fact that these countries were dragged into world market dynamics on an equal footing with already developed countries exacerbated these inequalities and saw the rapid burgeoning of informal economies. COVID-19 and the lockdown of western countries unravelled global production chains, resulting in hordes of workers in the Global South losing their livelihoods. Even people engaged in traditionally locally-bound economic activities, such as domestic work and sex work, found their livelihoods disappear. This volume brings together case studies from India, Brazil, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka to analyze global economic disruptions as they affected informal sector workers who were already largely invisible within state development policies. The chapters question whether existing models of neoliberal development are still conducive within the post-pandemic Global South as it grapples with rebuilding economies, livelihoods, institutions, and systems of governance.

This book is written as a tribute to Frederick Nixson’s extensive work on industrial development in the Global South, while seeking to actively engage with the latest arguments concerning development economics, together with changes in manufacturing and industrial policy that continue to shape the role of the Global South in the international economy, the impact of the increased concentration of global multinational corporations in that space, along with the rise of new financing tools and debt traps. The chapters pay homage to Fred’s broad view of the international development process and reflect his breadth of perception both theoretically and geographically. The book targets both the scholarly and policymaking audience.