Introduction: Work Beyond the Wage

Labour geography I: Labour agency, informal work, global south perspectives and the ontology of futures

“…An important background for discussing research on labour agency in informal work is recognising the worthiness of the latter in receiving such attention. Here, I begin by discussing Monteith et al (2021)’s Beyond the Wage: Ordinary Work in Diverse Economies . This edited volume uses a geographical perspective to criticise and broaden research questions surrounding ‘what is work?’ beyond the limits of waged employment definitions.…”

“…Monteith et al (2021) propose the language of ‘ordinary work’ to mean a wide variety of ‘…socio-economic activities in our lives’ and ‘…consider wage employment as one of multiple forms of work, alongside forced labour, hustling, cooperative living and digital platform tasking, to name but a few’. (10).…”