Precarious Self-Employment in India: A Case of Home-Based Own Account Enterprises

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-162
Author(s):  
Tulika Tripathi ◽  
Nripendra Kishore Mishra
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Classic Case ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
Living Wages ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Enterprise Surveys

Abstract A new thrust towards self-employment is seen in India where more than half of the labor class is fending for itself outside the ambit of any kind of employment. Global production networks (gpn s) have changed the structure of the labor market and extended precarity to almost every part of work and world. This has created a labor class that is neither proletariat nor bourgeois but a petty producer integrated in gpn s through mediators called ‘contractors.’ These producers are basically laborers who have been pushed out of the factory system and forced into self-employment. The paper has studied the trajectory of non-agricultural home-based Own Account Enterprises (oae s); a classic case of petty producers across gender and caste lines in various sectors of industry using state-organized enterprise surveys conducted in 2010–2011 and 2015–2016. It has found a vast majority of oae s earning less than half the proposed minimum wage (pmv)—a threshold similar to the idea of living wages rates. The most distressed oae s are in manufacturing, especially, textile, garment, leather, and chemical industries. The over emphasis on self-employment is shrinking the space for labor movement particularly in the global South.

scholarly journals Microenterprise development, industrial labour and the seductions of precarity

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Prentice
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Garment Workers ◽  
Microenterprise Development ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
Home Based ◽  
History Of ◽  
Market Relations

Microenterprise development is underpinned by an ideology that the solution to poverty is the integration of the poor into market relations. This article addresses the paradox that its ‘beneficiaries’ may be dispossessed industrial workers who already have a long history of participation in the capitalist economy. Exploring the transformation of garment workers in Trinidad from factory employees to home-based ‘micro-entrepreneurs’, I argue that working conditions and labour rights have deteriorated under the protective cover of seemingly laudable policies to promote economic empowerment via self-employment. Showing how microenterprise initiatives contribute to women workers’ ‘adverse incorporation’ ( Phillips, 2011 ) into global production networks, this article calls for renewed attention to the labour politics of microenterprise development.

The Role of SMEs in Global Production Networks

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niklas Egels-Zandén
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Organizational Fields ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Living Wages ◽  
Profit Maximizing ◽  
Distinct Role

Anti-sweatshop activists have turned global production networks (GPNs) into contested organizational fields. Although this contest has triggered the growth of an extensive literature on contested GPNs, the scholarly conversation is still limited in two important ways: First, it ignores or dismisses the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in GPNs and, second, it assumes that firms are driven solely by rational profit-maximizing motives. Based on a study of a Swedish SME’s payment of living wages at its Indian supplier, this article addresses these limitations by demonstrating how SMEs’ peculiarities allow them to assume a distinct role in contested GPNs. Furthermore, this article contributes to the scholarly conversation about living wages by providing a much-needed move beyond conceptual discussions into empirical studies of the underlying trade-offs of paying living wages.

Situating Self-Employed Urban Women Conducting Business through Contemporary Social Media

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shruti Kalyanaraman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Informal Economy ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Business Women ◽  
Employed Women

Informal economy includes varied set of economic activities, enterprises, jobs, and workers. The economy typically consists of enterprises and/or people that are not regulated or protected by the state. The concept originally applied to self-employment in small unregistered enterprises. It has been expanded to include wage employment in unprotected jobs. A home-based self-employed women worker can be involved as a fashion designer, a tiffin service provider, a home tutor, a person working with vendors, selling and reselling apparel, accessories to name a few. Informal self-employment is very large and heterogeneous as a category itself. There are different people working within in an informally self-employed category. The review tries to understand home based business women within the ambit of informal employment. The focus of research turns to technological advancement, social media and its impact on womens economic and business efforts. The review, using a feminist lens, understands academic researches on womens economic efforts. The reviews focus will largely be owners and own account (individually run enterprises) women workers of informal enterprises in urban areas which for ease of reference, I have termed as home-based self-employed urban woman.

A Substantive Theory of Transnational Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Bartley
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Standards ◽  
Transnational Governance ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Private Regulation ◽  
Substantive Theory ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Differential Performance

Social scientists have theorized the rise of transnational private authority, but knowledge about its consequences remains sparse and fragmented. This chapter builds from a critique of “empty spaces” imagery in several leading paradigms to a new theory of transnational governance. Rules and assurances are increasingly flowing through global production networks, but these flows are channeled and reconfigured by domestic governance in a variety of ways. Abstracting from the case studies in this book, a series of theoretical propositions specify the likely outcomes of private regulation, the influence of domestic governance, the special significance of territory and rights, and several ways in which the content of rules shapes their implementation. As such, this theory proposes an explanation for differences across places, fields, and issues, including the differential performance of labor and environmental standards.

Transnational Standards and Empty Spaces

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Bartley
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Transnational Governance ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Private Regulation ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
Making Sense

A vast new world of transnational standards has emerged, covering issues from human rights to sustainability to food safety. This chapter develops a framework for making sense of this new global order. It is tempting to imagine that global rules can and should bypass corrupt, incapacitated, or illegitimate governments in poor and middle-income countries. This assumption must be rejected if we want to understand the consequences of global rules and the prospects for improvement. After showing how a combination of social movements, global production networks, and neoliberalism gave rise to transnational private regulation, the chapter builds the foundations for the comparative approach of this book. The book’s comparative analysis of land and labor in Indonesia and China sheds light on two key fields of transnational governance, their implications in democratic and authoritarian settings, and the problems of governing the global economy through private regulation.

scholarly journals Self-employment as a stepping stone to better labor market matching: a comparison between immigrants and natives

2020 ◽  
Vol 86 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-501
Author(s):  
Magdalena Ulceluse
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Demographic Characteristics ◽  
Labour Force Survey ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
Barriers To Employment ◽  
Labor Market Matching ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Eu

AbstractThe paper investigates the relation between overeducation and self-employment, in a comparative analysis between immigrants and natives. Using the EU Labour Force Survey for the year 2012 and controlling for a list of demographic characteristics and general characteristics of 30 destination countries, it finds that the likelihood of being overeducated decreases for self-employed immigrants, with inconclusive results for self-employed natives. The results shed light on the extent to which immigrants adjust to labor market imperfections and barriers to employment and might help explain the higher incidence of self-employment that immigrants exhibit, when compared to natives. This is the first study to systematically study the nexus between overeducation and self-employment in a comparative framework. Moreover, the paper tests the robustness of the results by employing two different measures of overeducation, contributing to the literature of the measurement of overeducation.

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