Surviving the Gig Economy in the Global South: How Cape Town Domestic Workers Cope

2020 ◽  
pp. 67-85
Author(s):  
Boitumelo Lesala Khethisa ◽  
Pitso Tsibolane ◽  
Jean-Paul Van Belle
Keyword(s):  
Cape Town ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Global South ◽  
Gig Economy

Insurgent words: challenging the coloniality of language

2021 ◽  
Vol 272 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-126
Author(s):  
Ana Deumert
Keyword(s):  
Language Ideologies ◽  
World System ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Global South ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Scale Resistance ◽  
The World ◽  
Micro Level

Abstract This article explores language ideologies and sociolinguistic scales from the perspective of decolonization. Coloniality is a multi-scalar world system that affects micro-level interactions in multiple locales, both in the metropole and in the former colonies. Not only does coloniality exist on a world scale, resistance to it is scaled up too and engulfs the world. The linguistic tradition that I seek to trace in this article is imaginative, creative and oriented towards alternative decolonial futures. It speaks to the experience of the coloniality of language, of language as alienating and oppressive, and to the corresponding desire, and need, for a different language. It articulates a decolonial philosophy and brings art and politics together to change the world. I show that the global south was, and is, an intellectual-artistic-political vanguard, articulating and shaping discourses about language and revolutionary action. In philosophical, artistic and political practice – stretching from Martinique to Paris, from Cape Town to Kingston – language and revolutionary practice merge into one: language no longer just reflects reality, it can change it.

scholarly journals Decolonising Labour, Reclaiming Subaltern Epistemologies: Brazilian Domestic Workers and the International Struggle for Labour Rights

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louisa Acciari
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Global South ◽  
Decent Work ◽  
Labour Rights ◽  
Brazilian Legislation ◽  
Brazilian State ◽  
Boomerang Effect ◽  
Rights Discourse

Abstract This study explores the labour rights discourse produced by Brazilian domestic workers. It shows that the 2015 Brazilian legislation which extended labour rights to domestic workers was not simply a ‘boomerang effect’ of ILO Convention 189 on decent work for domestic workers, or a case of the ‘vernacularisation’ of global rights. Indeed, domestic workers have agitated for equal labour rights since 1936, and articulated the specific rights contained in the new legislation decades before their institutional recognition. Therefore, rather than being an instance of the translation of pre-existing global frameworks at the local level, the case of domestic workers demonstrates the ability of subaltern groups to transnationalise their demands, suggesting that the global South should not be conceived only as a place of rights reception, but also as a place of rights production. In this context, I trace the genealogy of the labour rights discourse as imagined and mobilised by domestic workers in Brazil, and examine the ways in which they have travelled between their subaltern location, the Brazilian state and the international agenda about ‘decent work.’

scholarly journals Fragment urbanism: Politics at the margins of the city

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 1007-1025 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin McFarlane
Keyword(s):  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Global South ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Urban Sanitation ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The City

Fragmentation is a keyword in the history of critical urban thought. Yet the products of fragmentation – the fragments themselves – tend to receive less attention. In this paper, I develop a politics of urban fragments as a contribution to debates both in urban theory and in urban poverty and inequality. I examine inadequate and broken material fragments on the economic margins of the urban global South, and ask how they become differently politicized in cities. I develop a three-fold framework for understanding the politics of fragments: attending to, generative translation and surveying wholes. I build these arguments through a focus on a fundamental provision – urban sanitation – drawing on research in Mumbai in particular, as well as Cape Town, and connecting those instances to research on urban poverty, politics and fragmentation.

scholarly journals The urban water metabolism of Cape Town: Towards becoming a water sensitive city

2021 ◽  
Vol 117 (5/6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ffion Atkins ◽  
Tyrel Flügel ◽  
Rui Hugman
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Water Cycle ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Global South ◽  
Spatially Explicit ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Water Metabolism ◽  
Groundwater Storage ◽  
Quality Of Water ◽  
The City

To improve its resilience to increasing climatic uncertainty, the City of Cape Town (the City) aims to become a water sensitive city by 2040. To undertake this challenge, a means to measure progress is needed that quantifies the urban water systems at a scale that enables a whole-of-system approach to water management. Using an urban water metabolism framework, we (1) provide a first city-scale quantification of the urban water cycle integrating its natural and anthropogenic flows, and (2) assess alternative water sources (indicated in the New Water Programme) and whether they support the City towards becoming water sensitive. We employ a spatially explicit method with particular consideration to apply this analysis to other African or Global South cities. At the time of study, centralised potable water demand by the City amounted to 325 gigalitres per annum, 99% of which was supplied externally from surface storage, and the remaining ~1% internally from groundwater storage (Atlantis aquifer). Within the City’s boundary, runoff, wastewater effluent and groundwater represent significant internal resources which could, in theory, improve supply efficiency and internalisation as well as hydrological performance. For the practical use of alternative resources throughout the urban landscape, spatially explicit insight is required regarding the seasonality of runoff, local groundwater storage capacity and the quality of water as it is conveyed through the complex urban landscape. We suggest further research to develop metrics of urban water resilience and equity, both of which are important in a Global South context.

scholarly journals Migration, Interfaith Engagement, and Mission among Somali Refugees in Kenya: Assessing the Cape Town Commitment from a Global South Perspective One Decade On

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Martin Munyao
Keyword(s):  
Cape Town ◽  
Global South ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Culturally Appropriate ◽  
Mission Theology ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Somali Refugee ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Church

In the last decade, since the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization (2010) in Cape Town, South Africa, the world has significantly changed. The majority of the world’s Christians are located in the Global South. Globalization, conflict, and migration have catalyzed the emergence of multifaith communities. All these developments have in one way or another impacted missions in twenty-first-century sub-Saharan Africa. As both Christianity and Islam are spreading and expanding, new approaches to a peaceful and harmonious coexistence have been developed that seem to be hampering the mission of the Church as delineated in the Cape Town Commitment (2010). Hence a missiological assessment of the Cape Town Commitment is imperative for the new decade’s crosscutting developments and challenges. In this article, the author contends that the mission theology of the 2010 Lausanne Congress no longer addresses the contemporary complex reality of a multifaith context occasioned by refugee crises in Kenya. The article will also describe the Somali refugee situation in Nairobi, Kenya, occasioned by political instability and violence in Somalia. Finally, the article will propose a methodology for performing missions for interfaith engagement in Nairobi’s Eastleigh refugee centers in the post Cape Town Commitment era. The overall goal is to provide mainstream evangelical mission models that are biblically sound, culturally appropriate, and tolerant to the multifaith diversity in conflict areas.

scholarly journals Covid-19 and feminism in the Global South: Challenges, initiatives and dilemmas

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadje Al-Ali
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Global South ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Vulnerable Communities ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Drastic Increase ◽  
Gender Based

The article addresses the gendered implications of Covid-19 in the Global South by paying attention to the intersectional pre-existing inequalities that have given rise to specific risks and vulnerabilities. It explores various aspects of the pandemic-induced ‘crisis of social reproduction’ that affects women as the main caregivers as well as addressing the drastic increase of various forms of gender-based violence. Both, in addition to growing poverty and severely limited access to resources and health services, are particularly devastating in marginalized and vulnerable communities in the Global South. The article looks at specific regions and countries to illustrate wider challenges faced by LGBTQ populations, ethnic minorities, domestic workers, migrants and sex workers. Against the background of these gendered intersectional challenges, the article then moves to discuss feminist initiatives and mobilizations to deal with the crisis in specific local contexts as well as nationally, regionally and transnationally. It concludes by highlighting a number of visions, tensions and dilemmas faced by feminists in the Global South that will need to be taken into consideration in terms of transnational feminist solidarities.

scholarly journals Negotiated Precarity in the Global South: A Case Study of Migration and Domestic Work in South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (14) ◽  
pp. 210-227
Author(s):  
Zaheera Jinnah
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Global South ◽  
Employment Relations ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Discrimination In Employment

This article explores precarity as a conceptual framework to understand the intersection of migration and low-waged work in the global south. Using a case study of cross-border migrant domestic workers in South Africa, I discuss current debates on framing and understanding precarity, especially in the global south, and test its use as a conceptual framework to understand the everyday lived experiences and strategies of a group that face multiple forms of exclusion and vulnerability. I argue that a form of negotiated precarity, defined as transactions which provide opportunities for survival but also render people vulnerable, can be a useful way to make sense of questions around (il)legality and (in)formality in the context of poorly protected work, insecure citizenship and social exclusion. Precarity as a negotiated strategy shows the ways in which people interact with systems and institutions and foregrounds their agency. But it also illustrates that the negative outcomes inherent in more traditional notions of precarity, expressed in physical and economic vulnerability, and discrimination in employment relations, mostly hurt the poor. This suggests the importance of an intersectional approach to understanding precarity in labour migration studies.

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