Why Do Informal Workers Organize?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Calla Hummel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Capacity Constraints ◽  
Grassroots Activism ◽  
Street Vendor ◽  
La Paz ◽  
Informal Work ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
Informal Workers

Chapter 1 introduces the puzzle of organized street vendors with the stories of two street vendors: Rosa, the founding leader of a champagne ladies’ union in La Paz, and Renato, who works as an unorganized electronics vendor in São Paulo. The chapter then situates the puzzle within existing research on collective action, civil society, informal work, and state capacity. According to most scholars, informal workers do not organize, which makes Rosa’s union and its affiliation with a national street vendor confederation puzzling. The chapter outlines an explanation for why informal workers organize, assesses alternative explanations around grassroots activism and clientelism, and presents the research design for the book. Specifically, it finds that officials encourage informal workers to organize self-regulating groups. The chapter argues that this is most likely to happen where officials have governance goals and career ambitions but face capacity constraints and where informal workers have the know-how to organize self-regulating groups.

Managing Contentious Collective Action

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-129
Author(s):  
Calla Hummel
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Street Vendor ◽  
La Paz ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
Street Vending ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

Chapter 5 develops an ethnography of street vendors, their organizations, and the city officials who they interact with in the city of La Paz, Bolivia. The chapter is based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the city over four research trips in 2012, 2014 to 2015, 2018, and 2019 as well as administrative data on 31,906 street vending licenses in the city. Fieldwork included interviews, participant observation at dozens of meetings between bureaucrats and organized vendors, ride-alongs with the Municipal Guard, a street vendor survey, working as a street vendor in a clothing market, and selling wedding services with a street vendor cooperative. The theory’s observable implications are illustrated with ethnographic evidence, survey results, and license data from La Paz. I discuss how street vending has changed in the city and how officials have intervened in collective action decisions as the informal sector grew. The chapter demonstrates that officials increased benefits to organized vendors as the costs of regulating markets increased. Additionally, the leaders that take advantage of these offers tend to have more resources than their colleagues, and as the offers increased, so did the level of organization among the city’s street vendors. The chapter also discusses the many trade-offs that officials make in implementing different policies, and how officials manage the often combative organizations that they encourage.

scholarly journals Disobedient Markets: Street Vendors, Enforcement, and State Intervention in Collective Action

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (11) ◽  
pp. 1524-1555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calla Hummel
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
La Paz ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
Global Workforce ◽  
Poor Group ◽  
Game Theoretic

At 50% of the global workforce, informal workers constitute a large, diffuse, and resource-poor group with high barriers to collective action. Contrary to scholars’ expectations, informal workers organize to varying degrees in most countries, and states often encourage them to do so. Why do some informal workers organize while others do not? I argue that states can intervene in informal workers’ collective action decisions: As enforcement costs increase, states may pay informal workers to organize, and then bargain with the resulting organization over self-regulation. I present a game theoretic model of state intervention in collective action and illustrate it with original ethnographic, survey, and interview evidence from street markets in La Paz, Bolivia. I suggest that informal workers interact strategically with states and conclude with implications for formalization policies.

Informal Work in Numbers

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-84
Author(s):  
Calla Hummel
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Data Set ◽  
La Paz ◽  
Informal Work ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
The World ◽  
El Alto ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
The Comparative Study

Chapter 3 introduces survey data from around the world and establishes broad trends in informal work and civil society participation. Descriptive statistics show that informal workers organize in nearly every country in the sample and extensively organize in many. I estimate a data set of informal workers using survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and a machine learning algorithm. Regressions on the estimated data set, a data set of known informal workers, and a data set of self-employed workers suggest that informal workers are more likely to organize in low-capacity countries. The chapter then turns to survey data from the 42 countries around the world in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) database and find similar patterns between informal work, state capacity, and political participation. The quantitative analyses point to cases to examine in more depth. Two cities in the La Paz department of Bolivia, La Paz and El Alto were selected, to see how informal workers interact with officials with lower enforcement capacity, as well as two districts in São Paulo, Brazil, to understand how informal workers interact with officials with higher enforcement capacity.

Why Informal Workers Organize

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calla Hummel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
Informal Worker ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
Global Workforce ◽  
Civil Society Participation ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Ethnographic Data

Informal workers make up over two billion workers or about 50 percent of the global workforce. Surprisingly, scholars know little about informal workers’ political or civil society participation. An informal worker is anyone who holds a job and who does not pay taxes on taxable earnings, does not hold a license for their work when one is required, or is not part of a mandatory social security system. For decades, researchers argued that informal workers rarely organized or participated in civil society and politics. However, millions of informal workers around the world start and join unions. Why do informal workers organize? In countries like Bolivia, informal workers such as street vendors, fortune-tellers, witches, clowns, gravestone cleaners, sex workers, domestic workers, and shoe shiners come together in powerful unions. In South Africa, South Korea, and India, national informal worker organizations represent millions of citizens. The data in this book find that informal workers organize in nearly every country for which data exists, but to varying degrees. This raises a related question: Why do informal workers organize in some places more than others? The reality of informal work described in this book and supported by surveys in 60 countries, over 150 interviews with informal workers in Bolivia and Brazil, ethnographic data from multiple cities, and administrative data upends the conventional wisdom on the informal sector. The contrast between scholarly expectations and emerging data underpin the central argument of the book: Informal workers organize where state officials encourage them to.

Pedagang Kaki Lima, Profil Entrepreneurship Sejati, Pelaku Ekonomi Kerakyatan, Ciptakan Jiwa Kewirausahaan Mandiri

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-35
Author(s):  
Agus Prasetya
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Data Analysis ◽  
Data Display ◽  
Job Seekers ◽  
Street Vendor ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collection Data ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article is motivated by the fact that the existence of the Street Vendor (PKL) profession is a manifestation of the difficulty of work and the lack of jobs. The scarcity of employment due to the consideration of the number of jobs with unbalanced workforce, economically this has an impact on the number of street vendors (PKL) exploding ... The purpose of being a street vendor is, as a livelihood, making a living, looking for a bite of rice for family, because of the lack of employment, this caused the number of traders to increase. The scarcity of jobs, causes informal sector migration job seekers to create an independent spirit, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, with capital, managed by traders who are true populist economic actors. The problems in street vendors are: (1) how to organize, regulate, empower street vendors in the cities (2) how to foster, educate street vendors, and (3) how to help, find capital for street vendors (4) ) how to describe grief as a Five-Foot Trader. This paper aims to find a solution to the problem of street vendors, so that cases of conflict, cases of disputes, clashes of street vendors with Satpol PP can be avoided. For this reason, the following solutions must be sought: (1) understanding the causes of the explosions of street vendors (2) understanding the problems of street vendors. (3) what is the solution to solving street vendors in big cities. (4) describe Street Vendors as actors of the people's economy. This article is qualitative research, the social paradigm is the definition of social, the method of retrieving observational data, in-depth interviews, documentation. Data analysis uses Interactive Miles and Huberman theory, with stages, Collection Data, Display Data, Data Reduction and Vervying or conclusions.

JUVENTUDE, TRABALHO INFORMAL E SAÚDE MENTAL

2020 ◽  
pp. 126-144
Author(s):  
Marina Batista Chaves Azevedo de Souza ◽  
Isabela Aparecida de Oliveira Lussi
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Informal Sector ◽  
Informal Work ◽  
Informal Workers

Estudos apontam que jovens podem exercer trabalhos informais por necessidade não por desejo pessoal, o que pode acarretar impactos negativos na saúde mental. O objetivo do artigo foi apontar abordagens, destacar problemáticas e realizar reflexões sobre juventude, trabalho informal e saúde mental, através do mapeamento de estudos científicos. Realizou-se uma revisão de escopo pelo modelo de Arksey e O’Malley para mapear/sintetizar os estudos. Foram encontrados 51 artigos com a expressão: "informal work" OR "informal workers" OR "informal sector" OR "informal job" OR informality AND "mental health" AND "young adult" OR "young adults" OR young OR youth e 2640 teses e dissertações. Após as exclusões das duplicações, ensaios teóricos, revisões, trabalhos indisponíveis e estudos em que os títulos e resumos não abordavam a temática central, analisou-se 6 artigos científicos e 3 dissertações na íntegra. Os estudos são de anos diversos, a maioria quantitativos e investigam associações entre trabalhos informais/precários/desemprego e sintomas psiquiátricos. Questões geracionais não foram consideradas indicadoras de peculiaridades sobre o assunto nos artigos, mas duas dissertações trouxeram essa discussão. Foram inexistentes artigos que priorizam percepções do trabalhador sobre sua condição de trabalho/saúde, todavia, uma das dissertações analisadas abordou as condições sociais e o trabalho precário como sugestivos a problemas de saúde. Indica-se como necessário realizar reflexões que articulem saúde mental a condições políticas/socioeconômicas, considerando o trabalho como determinante de saúde/doença e a juventude como detentora de idiossincrasias que influenciam nas reflexões sobre o tema.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Arneil
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Rural Land ◽  
Internal Colonialism ◽  
Key Terms

Chapter 1 defines the volume’s key terms: domestic colonization as the process of segregating idle, irrational, and/or custom-bound groups of citizens by states and civil society organizations into strictly bounded parcels of ‘empty’ rural land within their own nation state in order to engage them in agrarian labour and ‘improve’ both the land and themselves and domestic colonialism as the ideology that justifies this process, based on its economic (offsets costs) and ethical (improves people) benefits. The author examines and differentiates her own research from previous literatures on ‘internal colonialism’ and argues that her analysis challenges postcolonial scholarship in four important ways: colonization needs to be understood as a domestic as well as foreign policy; people were colonized based on class, disability, and religious belief as well as race; domestic colonialism was defended by socialists and anarchists as well as liberal thinkers; and colonialism and imperialism were quite distinct ideologies historically even if they are often difficult to distinguish in contemporary postcolonial scholarship—put simply—the former was rooted in agrarian labour and the latter in domination. This chapter concludes with a summary of the remaining chapters.

scholarly journals Implementasi Inovasi Kebijakan Pembangunan Berkelanjutan di Kota Surakarta: Relokasi PKL di Taman Monumen Banjarsari ke Pasar Klitikan Notoharjo

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Lydia Wijayanti
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Development Policy ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Budget Cuts ◽  
Street Vendor ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
City Street ◽  
Vendor Management ◽  
Urban Development Policy ◽  
Bureaucratic Reform

ABSTRACTThe relocation of Surakarta City street vendors from Taman Monumen Banjarsari to Pasar KlitikanNotoharjo is one of the innovative urban development policy focusing on cultural values aiming tostrengthen local ingenuity as the city’s economic power. This study examines how the innovative policywas implemented successfully. The study showed that the success of the innovation was due to (1) theinitiative and commitment of the mayor, (2) a shift in the mindset, creating trust in the management ofstreet vendors, (3) bureaucratic reform followed by legislation of supporting documents, (4) continuousand integrated mechanism of implementation, and (5) budget cuts and focus to spending with highimpact to welfare. The creation of the street vendor management manual should assure thesustainability of the innovative policy for the next term of governance.Keywords: sustainable development, innovative policy, government administration

scholarly journals Liberalism, Governmentality and Counter-Conduct; An Introduction to Foucauldian Analytics of Liberal Civil Society Notions

2015 ◽  
pp. 8-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miikka Pyykkönen
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Potential Field ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Other ◽  
Coercive Power ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

This article gives an analysis of Foucault’s studies of civil society and the various liberalist critiques of government. It follows from Foucault’s genealogical approach that “civil society” does not in itself possess any form of transcendental existence; its historical reality must be seen as the result of the productive nature of the power-knowledge-matrices. Foucault emphasizes that modern governmentality—and more specifically the procedures he names “the conduct of conduct”—is not exercised through coercive power and domination, but is dependent on the freedom and activeness of individuals and groups of society. Civil society is thus analyzed as fundamentally ambivalent: on the one hand civil society is a field where different kinds of technologies of governance meet the lives and wills of groups and individuals, but on the other hand it is a potential field of what Foucault called ‘counter-conduct’ – for both collective action and individual political action.

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