Informal and Precarious Work: Insights from the Global South

Abstract

Informal and precarious work remains an enduring reality across the Global South and is growing fast in the North. A recognition that this form of work is the norm globally rather than the exception has ignited debates around analytical frames, activist strategies and development interventions. Engaging with Southern realities, as this special issue aims to do, helps contribute to a better understanding of this rising form of work globally while also providing insights into workers’ resistance and development policy limitations. Through detailed case studies from across the Global South, this special issue argues that informal and precarious work needs to be studied as embedded in concrete, historical, political and social contexts. It highlights the heterogeneity and complexity of intersecting social and material relations that underpin informal and precarious work which has crucial implications for class dynamics and political agency of labour.

Critical reflection and critical reflexivity as core processes for critical WOP: Precarious employment as an example

“…We decided to primarily draw on Islam (2020) because of the clearly outlined mechanisms through which the contexts operate. However, to align with Teo (2015) and Hammer and Ness (2021), we deviated from Islam (2020) in two ways. First, we distinguished a separate historical context, which is in line with Hammer and Ness (2021) and Teo (2015).…”

Producing Nollywood portal films: Navigating precarity through informal social relations and hope

“…Precarious work connotes labour and employment conditions that transfer social and economic risks from businesses onto workers through common features like low pay, employment insecurity, and insufficient social protection (Hammer and Ness, 2021; Kalleberg, 2009). Precarity has become a norm in the cultural industries, with creative work increasingly characterized by risks and uncertainty, as well as insecurity and casualization (Curtin and Sanson, 2017; Neilson and Coté, 2014).…”

“…Many of these creative ways of approaching precarity are contingent on the historical and socio-economic contexts of a specific industry. For instance, Western scholars theorize precarity in creative industries as the fallout of neoliberal principles of deregulation associated with the Reagan and Thatcher administrations (Curtin and Sanson, 2017; de Kloet et al, 2020; Hammer and Ness, 2021; Mayer, 2016). The situation is, however, different in China, where precarity is linked to strict government regulations instead of Western-oriented neoliberal logics (Lin, 2019).…”

“…Creative labour studies within the Global North reflect their welfarist contexts, in which job security and accruing employment benefits are the ideal labour practices (Alacovska and Gill, 2019; Caldwell, 2008; Hammer and Ness, 2021). Thus, much Western-oriented creative labour scholarship interprets precarity and informality as exploitative and a deviation from the standard welfare ideals (McRobbie, 2016; Neff, 2012).…”

Wage Theft and Work Safety: Immigrant Day Labor Jobs and the Potential for Worker Rights Training at Worker Centers

“…Labor scholars argue that precarious labor is, in general, distinct in the contexts of the Global North and the Global South, particularly due to variations of local economy and national political structure. The criteria used to define labor as precarious in the Global North could be perceived as characterizing standard labor in the Global South (Hammer and Ness, 2021). This dichotomous comparison is critical to understanding the production of workers for precarious work in the Global North.…”