Understanding West Africa’s informal workers as working class

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Joshua Lew McDermott
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Informal Workers

Labor Movements in Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico M. Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Labor Movements ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Labor

The history of Latin America cannot be understood without analyzing the role played by labor movements in organizing formal and informal workers across urban and rural contexts.This chapter analyzes the history of labor movements in Latin America from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. After debating the distinction between “working class” and “popular sectors,” the chapter proposes that labor movements encompass more than trade unions. The history of labor movements is analyzed through the dynamics of globalization, incorporation waves, revolutions, authoritarian breakdowns, and democratization. Taking a relational approach, these macro-dynamics are studied in connection with the main revolutionary and reformist strategic disputes of the Latin American labor movements.

scholarly journals Labour Conflicts and Working-Class Culture in Early Modern Holland

1990 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Dekker
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Textile Industry ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Modern Era

SUMMARYFrom the 15th to the 18th century Holland, the most urbanized part of the northern Netherlands, had a tradition of labour action. In this article the informal workers' organizations which existed especially within the textile industry are described. In the 17th century the action forms adjusted themselves to the better coordinated activities of the authorities and employers. After about 1750 this protest tradition disappeared, along with the economic recession which especially struck the traditional industries. Because of this the continuity of the transition from the ancien régime to the modern era which may be discerned in the labour movements of countries like France and England, cannot be found in Holland.

Informality, Class Structure, and Class Identity in Contemporary Argentina

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodolfo Elbert
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
America Latina ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Los Grupos

The dynamics of peripheral capitalism in Latin America includes the employment or self-employment of a significant proportion of the working class under informal arrangements. The neoliberal transformations of the 1990s deepened this feature of Latin American labor markets, and it was not reversed during the period of economic growth that followed the collapse of neoliberalism. In this context, sociological debates have focused on the relationship between the formal and the informal fractions of the working class. Examination of the biographical and family linkages between formal and informal workers in Argentina and the effect of these connections on the patterns of class self-identification of individuals shows that lived experience across the informality boundary makes formal workers similar to informal workers in terms of class self-identification. This research provides preliminary evidence that the two kinds of workers belong to the same social class because of the fluidity of the boundary that separates them. Instead of a class cleavage, this boundary is better defined as the separation between fractions of the working class. La dinámica del capitalismo periférico en América Latina implica la informalidad laboral (sea entre trabajadores contratados o autónomos) de una sustancial parte de la clase obrera. Las transformaciones neoliberales de los años noventa profundizaron esta característica de los mercados de trabajo latinoamericanos, y el problema no se revirtió durante el período de crecimiento económico que siguió al colapso del neoliberalismo. En este contexto, los debates sociológicos se han centrado en la relación entre los grupos formales e informales de la clase obrera. Un análisis de los vínculos biográficos y familiares entre los trabajadores formales e informales en Argentina y el efecto de dichas conexiones en los patrones individuales de autoidentificación de clase muestra que la experiencia vivida en los límites de la informalidad hace que los trabajadores formales se consideren similares a los informales en términos de identificación de clase. Esta investigación brinda evidencia preliminar de que los dos tipos de trabajadores pertenecen a la misma clase social.

Like Any Other Job?

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Erynn Masi de Casanova
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Domestic Work ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Domestic Worker ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
Political Effectiveness

This chapter explores some of the challenges that organizers of domestic workers in Ecuador face. Its discussion of domestic worker organizing touches on the three major themes of this book: social reproduction, informal arrangements that render domestic work invisible, and class relations that degrade and dehumanize workers. Workers' engagement in long hours of paid and unpaid social reproduction makes them difficult to reach and organize. Informal arrangements, and lack of political will and political effectiveness to change these arrangements, combine to make the enforcement of existing laws difficult. Moreover, relationships with the left-leaning state, embedded in traditional assumptions about who constitutes the working class—assumptions that leave out women and informal workers—have been fraught. The chapter then shows how domestic workers and their advocates have been organizing, what strategies they have used to demand the rights of these workers, and what the implications of these strategies are for political action and change.

scholarly journals Rethinking Working-class Politics: Organising Informal Workers in Argentina

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maisa Bascuas ◽  
Ruth Felder ◽  
Ana Logiudice ◽  
Viviana Patroni
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Assistance ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Popular Economy

Our article engages with discussions about the implications of precarious work and its impact on workers’ capacity to organise by analysing the case of Argentina’s Confederation of Popular Economy Workers (CTEP, Confederación de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular). The organisation was created in 2011 with the aim of representing a broad and heterogeneous group of workers in varying conditions of informality, precarious self-employment and workfare programmes. We trace the history of the organisation and analyse its development by focusing on the role of social assistance as a crucial expression of the changing relations between precarious workers and the state. Social assistance has provided some resources for addressing the reproduction needs of precarious workers and of the territories in which they live, and also the material means through which an organisation like CTEP has sought to consolidate its political work among precarious workers. Nonetheless, social assistance has also worked as a means to circumscribe broader demands for change into issues to be addressed through social policy. Our argument is that central to CTEP’s trajectory as an organisation of precarious workers was its attempt to break away from the narrow confines of social assistance, pushing for changes that would allow its members to gain some autonomy both materially and institutionally. KEYWORDS: Argentina; precarious worker organisations; CTEP; social assistance policy

scholarly journals COLONIALIDADE, GÊNERO E MERCADO DE TRABALHO: UM DIÁLOGO ENTRE A BIOPOLÍTICA E A NECROPOLÍTICA

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (23) ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Maritânia Salete Salvi RAFAGNIN (UCPEL) ◽  
Tiago LEMÕES (UCPEL)
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Flexible Accumulation ◽  
Productive Restructuring

Faz-se uma leitura da classe trabalhadora no contexto moderno-colonial utilizando-se das categorias da biopolítica de Foucault e necropolítica de Mbembe. Tais categorias são utilizadas como metodologia de análise dos fenômenos na periferia do capitalismo. Os resultados demonstram que, a produção de valores sempre foi relacionada ao trabalho vivo, contudo, com o advento da reestruturação produtiva, baseada na acumulação flexível, as empresas, descartaram a mão-de-obra (agora sobrante ao capitalismo), além do fato dos trabalhadores que mantiveram seus empregos, passaram a acumular diversas funções. Portanto, identificou-se que a precarização da vida tem incidido sobre a classe trabalhadora, submetida, cada vez mais, a novas formas de exploração da força de trabalho, sendo que na biopolítica inserem-se os trabalhadores formais e na necropolítica, os informais. Isso porque, o padrão que rege a sociedade capitalista é baseado nos valores de troca de mercadorias, logo, o sujeito não inserido nesse processo, é desnecessário para o sistema.Palavras-chave: Classe Trabalhadora. Biopolítica. Necropolítica.COLONIALITY, GENDER AND LABOR MARKET: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN BIOPOLITICS AND NECROPOLITICSA reading of the working class in the modern-colonial context is made using the categories of Foucault's biopolitics and Mbembe's necropolitics. Such categories are used as a methodology for analyzing phenomena on the periphery of capitalism. The results show that the production of values has always been related to live work, however, with the advent of productive restructuring, based on flexible accumulation, companies have discarded labor (now under capitalism), in addition to the fact of the workers who kept their jobs, started to accumulate several functions. Therefore, it was identified that the precariousness of life has affected the working class, which is increasingly subjected to new forms of exploitation of the workforce, with formal workers in the biopolitics and informal workers in the necropolitics. This is because, the standard that governs capitalist society is based on the exchange values of goods, therefore, the subject not inserted in this process, is unnecessary for the system.Keywords: Working class. Biopolitics. Necropolitics.

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