Since the 1980s, the world's governments have decreased state welfare and thus increased the number of unprotected 'informal' or 'precarious' workers. As a result, more and more workers do not ...receive secure wages or benefits from either employers or the state. This book offers a fresh and provocative look into the alternative social movements informal workers in India are launching. It also offers a unique analysis of the conditions under which these movements succeed or fail. Drawing from 300 interviews with informal workers, government officials and union leaders, Rina Agarwala argues that Indian informal workers are using their power as voters to demand welfare benefits from the state, rather than demanding traditional work benefits from employers. In addition, they are organizing at the neighborhood level, rather than the shop floor, and appealing to 'citizenship', rather than labor rights.
The Job Ladder Fields, Gary S; Gindling, T. H; Sen, Kunal ...
2023, 2023-03-30, 2023-03-15, 2023-03-09
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Using a range of countries from the Global South, this book examines heterogeneity within informal work by applying a common conceptual framework and empirical methodology. The country studies use ...panel data to study the dynamics of worker transitions between formal and heterogeneous, informal work. The range of country studies in the book (covering Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa) allow us to present a comparative perspective across developing countries. Each country study provides a nuanced view of informality, dividing workers into six work status groups: formal wage-employees, upper-tier informal wage-employees, lower-tier informal wage-employees, formal self-employed, upper-tier informal self-employed, and lower-tier informal self-employed. Based on this common conceptual framework, the country studies examine the distribution of workers between each of these work status groups. Using panel data, the country studies document transition patterns across different formality and work status groups. The panel data analysed in each country study gives a basis for making statements about labour market transitions that are not warranted when using comparable cross sections. In addition to measuring the distribution of workers and transitions between work status groups, each country study also examines individual-level and household-level characteristics associated with workers in each work status. Using these characteristics, each country study constructs a ‘job ladder’ that ranks each work status. The country studies then examine the characteristics of workers that are associated with transitions up (and down) the job ladder.
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.
The concepts of formal and informal remain central to the theory and practice of development more than half a century after they were introduced into the debate. They help structure the way that ...statistical services collect data on the economies of developing countries, the development of theoretical and empirical analysis, and, most important, the formulation and implementation of policy. This volume brings together a significant new collection of studies on formality and informality in developing countries. The volume is multidisciplinary in nature, with contributions from anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and political scientists. It contains contributions from among the very best analysts in development studies. Between them the chapters argue for moving beyond the formal-informal dichotomy. Useful as it has proven to be, a more nuanced approach is needed in light of conceptual and empirical advances, and in light of the policy failures brought about by a characterization of the 'informal' as 'disorganized'. The wealth of empirical information in these studies, and in the literature more widely, can be used to develop guiding principles for intervention that are based on ground level reality. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance//toc.html Contributors to this volume - Rajeev Ahuja, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations Krister Andersson, Indiana University Martha Alter Chen, Harvard University Robert K. Christensen, Indiana University Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis, UNU-WIDER Keith Hart, Goldsmiths College, University of London Ravi Kanbur, Cornell University Robert Lensink, University of Groningen Norman V. Loayza, The World Bank Mark McGillivray, UNU-WIDER M. R. Narayana, Institute for Social and Economic Change Jeffrey B. Nugent, University of Southern California Elinor Ostrom, Indiana University Ana Maria Oviedo, University of Maryland Diego Pacheco, Indiana University Sally Roever, University of California, Berkeley Amos Sawyer, Indiana University Luis Serven, The World Bank Alice Sindzingre, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris Fredrik Soderbaum, Goteborg University Shailender Swaminathan, University of Alabama Pham Thi Thu Tra Pham, University of Groningen Liz Alden Wily, Independent Land Tenure and National Resources Management Adviser
Africa's informal workers Lindell, Ilda
Africa's informal workers: collective agency, alliances and transnational organizing in urban Africa,
2010., 2010, 2013, 2010-04-08, 2013-04-04, 20100101
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Africa's Informal Workers is a vigorous examination of the informalization and casualization of work, which is changing livelihoods in Africa and beyond. Gathering cases from nine countries and ...cities across sub-Saharan Africa, and from a range of sectors, this volume goes beyond the usual focus on household ‘coping strategies’ and individual agency, addressing the growing number of collective organizations through which informal workers make themselves visible and articulate their demands and interests. The emerging picture is that of a highly diverse landscape of organized actors, providing grounds for tension but also opportunities for alliance. The collection examines attempts at organizing across the formal-informal work spheres, and explores the novel trend of transnational organizing by informal workers. Part of the ground-breaking Africa Now series, Africa’s Informal Workers is a timely exploration of deep, ongoing economic, political and social transformations.
Online markets in cryptocurrency represent a sprawling and eclectic alternative financial system, selling cutting edge techno-investment schemes that are complex and high risk. Crime control is ...almost entirely absent from this new crypto economy, and it is full of scams. This paper draws on an ethnography of crypto trading to review the main types of scam, suggesting that the grey economy of cryptocurrency trading is part of a wider evolution of society towards the technosocial, and beyond that perhaps towards the metaversal.
Improving skills development in the informal sector Adams, Arvil V; Johansson de Silva, Sara; Razmara, Setareh
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Jun 2013, 295 pp,
2013., 2013, 7-18-2013, 2013-06-18, 20130601
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The informal sector of Sub-Saharan Africa is comprised of small and household enterprises that operate in the non-farm sector outside the protected employment of the formal wage sector. The sector ...was identified 40 years ago by the ILO representing a pool of surplus labor that was expected to be absorbed by future industrialization, but rather than gradually disappearing, it has become a persistent feature of the regions economic landscape accounting for a majority of jobs created off the farm. Acknowledging its potential as a source of employment for the regions expanding workforce and improving its productivity and earnings is recognized as a priority for poverty reduction. This study examines the role played by education and skills development in achieving this objective.Until now, few studies have used household labor force surveys to capture the skills profile of the informal sector and study how different means of skills development - formal education, technical and vocational education and training, apprenticeships, and learning on the job -- shape productivity and earnings in the informal sector as compared with the formal wage sector. This study uses household labor force surveys to look at the experience of skills development in five African countries - Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Tanzania - that together account for one-third of the nearly 900 million persons living in SSA. The study defines the non-farm informal sector as the self-employed (own account and with workers), contributing family members, and wage workers in small and household enterprises.Of the nearly 36 million working off the farm in the five countries, 7 out of 10 are working in the informal sector. The importance of this study is its quantitative assessment of how different sources of skills development are related to the sector in which one works and the
earnings received in that sector. It further highlights a set of economic constraints to acquiring skills in the small and household enterprises of the informal sector that will have to be overcome if skills are to become a means for improving productivity and earnings in this sector. The study offers a comprehensive strategy for improving employment outcomes in the informal sector through skills development with examples of successful interventions taken from international experience and the five countries.
The Dominican Republic has posted impressive economic growth
rates over the past thirty years. Despite this, the generation of
new, good jobs has been remarkably weak. How have ordinary and poor
...Dominicans worked and lived in the shadow of the country's
conspicuous growth rates? This book considers this question through
an ethnographic exploration of the popular economy in the Dominican
capital. Focusing on the city's precarious small businesses,
including furniture manufacturers, food stalls, street-corner
stores, and savings and credit cooperatives, Krohn-Hansen shows how
people make a living, tackle market shifts, and the factors that
characterize their relationship to the state and pervasive
corruption.
Empirically grounded, this book examines the condition of the
urban masses in Santo Domingo, offering an original and captivating
contribution to the scholarship on popular economic practices,
urban changes, and today's Latin America and the Caribbean. This
will be essential reading for scholars and policy makers.
Zimbabwe has witnessed the rapid expansion of informal cross-border trading (ICBT) with neighbouring countries over the past two decades. Beginning in the mid-1990s when the country embarked on its ...Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), a large number of people were forced into informal employment through worsening economic conditions and the decline in formal sector jobs. The country s post-2000 economic col-lapse resulted in the closure of many industries and created market opportunities for the further expansion of ICBT. This report, part of SAMP s Growing Informal Cities series, sought to provide a current picture of ICBT in Zimbabwe by interviewing a sample of 514 Harare-based informal entrepreneurs involved in cross-border trading with South Africa.
Power and Informality in Urban Africa Laura Stark, Annika Björnsdotter Teppo / Laura Stark, Annika Björnsdotter Teppo
2021, 2022, 2022-01-27
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Urban Africa is undergoing a transformation unlike anywhere else in the world, as unprecedented numbers of people migrate to rapidly expanding cities. But despite the growing body of work on urban ...Africa, the lives of these new city dwellers have received relatively little attention, particularly when it comes to crucial issues of power and inequality. This interdisciplinary collection brings together contributions from urban studies, geography, and anthropology to provide new insights into the social and political dynamics of African cities, as well as uncovering the causes and consequences of urban inequality. Featuring rich new ethnographic research data and case studies drawn from across the continent, the collection shows that Africa’s new urbanites have adapted to their environs in ways which often defy the assumptions of urban planners. By examining the experiences of these urban residents in confronting issues of power and agency, the contributors consider how such insights can inform more effective approaches to research, city planning and development both in Africa and beyond.
