Circular Economy of Dharavi

As developing nations continue to progress, people of these countries face problems of shortages in building materials and rising production of solid waste. The purpose of this research study is to explore the potential of establishing a circular economy by recycling/reusing solid waste as alternative building materials. Focused on the slum of Dharavi in Mumbai, a settlement well-known for its existing recycling business, this article explores the concept of a circular economy utilizing local informal labor by considering the flow of waste materials in the slum. This article presents an analysis of the case studies where waste is reused as a building product and identifies the gaps, advantages, and disadvantages related to how and where the building materials from the case studies could be adapted in the context of the Dharavi slum.

Analysis of Factors Influencing Credit Access of Vietnamese Informal Labors in the Time of COVID-19 Pandemic

Credit is considered as an essential tool to make informal labor’s income better. In order to improve quality of their life, the state should have some supports them in credit access. This study analyzes factors causing credit access of informal labors to be changed in the time of COVID-19 pandemic. Using survey data collected from 2020 VHSSL (2019–2020), this approach has two models including a binary logit model and a multinomial logit model (MLM). The results revealed that the positive factors including education, material, collateral, credit size, credit source, credit debt which are likely to affect to credit access, however age, family size, ethnicity, interest, paid money are negative. Besides, it also concludes that quality of life of informal labor is considerably influenced by credit access, collateral, credit source, credit debt from the observed samples. Additionally, this paper recommends some policies to enhance informal labor’s access to credit and their quality of life.

Wage Theft and Work Safety: Immigrant Day Labor Jobs and the Potential for Worker Rights Training at Worker Centers

Immigrant day laborers routinely experience exploitative behaviors as part of their employment. These experiences are understood in the context of their immigration histories and in the context of their long-term goals for less precarious labor and living situations. Using mixed methods, over three data collection periods in 2016, 2019, and 2020, we analyze the work experiences of immigrant day labors in Houston and Austin, Texas. We report how workers judge precarious jobs and respond to labor exploitation in an informal labor market. We also discuss data pertaining to a worker rights training intervention conducted through a city-sponsored worker center. We discuss the potential for worker centers to be a convening and remediation space for workers and employers. Worker centers where immigrant day labors meet employers offer the potential for informal intervention into wage theft and work safety violations, by formalizing the context where laborers are hired.

Informal Labor Markets in Times of Pandemic: Evidence for Latin America and Policy Options

Se documenta la evolución de los mercados laborales de cinco países latinoamericanos durante la pandemia del COVID-19, con énfasis en el empleo informal. Se muestra, para la mayoría de países, una caída en el empleo agregado, reflejada en una caída en la participación laboral y una disminución de la tasa de informalidad. Esto último no tiene precedentes ya que la informalidad solía amortiguar la caída del empleo agregado en recesiones anteriores. Usando un modelo de ciclos económicos con una detallada estructura del mercado laboral, se recuperan los choques que racionalizan la recesión pandémica, mostrando que choques en la oferta laboral y de productividad en el sector informal son esenciales para dar cuenta de la pérdida de empleo y producción y del descenso en la tasa de informalidad.

A Critique of Marketism: Varieties of Exchanges in China’s Past and Present

The theory and ideology of mainstream Anglo-American “marketism” do not accord with reality. Its core idea—equating all trade with equal and mutually beneficial market exchanges, and believing that such exchanges are certain to lead to division of labor and transformative changes in labor productivity—is a one-sided, idealized construction. It erases unequal exchanges under imperialism and ignores the realities of the use of cheap informal labor in developing countries by hegemonic capital in the globalized economy. It also disregards pervasive unethical pursuits of profit among producers and widespread human weaknesses among consumers. If we proceed instead from China’s actual experiences, we can come to see and grasp the many different varieties of trade that differ from the abstractions of conventional marketism, including the “commercialization of extraction” that long characterized the principally unidirectional “trade” based on severe inequities between town and country, as well as the “growth without (labor productivity) development,” or “involutionary commercialization,” that long characterized domestic Chinese commerce that emerged under severe population pressures on the land. If we turn instead to the “take-off” period of the recent decades in Chinese economic development, we can see also the great contrast between Chinese realities and the mainstream economics construct of a “laissez faire state,” and see instead the state engaging most actively in development, and state-owned enterprises working closely together with private enterprises. Those realities are perhaps most evident in the recent dramatic development of China’s mammoth real estate economy that has been the main engine of rapid development since about 2000—most especially in its immense process of the “capitalization of land.” We can also see how the tradition of the “socialist planned economy” has operated in unison with the new capitalist market economy, by combining the twin ideals and mechanisms of “people’s livelihood” and “private profit.” What is needed is a new kind of political economy that can grasp and illuminate such changes.

Immigration, Wages and Employment under Informal Labor Markets

This paper studies the labor market impacts of a massive inflow of Venezuelans in Colombia. By comparing areas that received different shares of migrants, I find a negative effect on wages and on local employment for natives. The negative wage effect is driven by a large drop of wages in the informal sector, where migrants are mostly employed, while the negative employment effect is driven by a reduction of employment in the formal sector, where the minimum wage is binding. To explain these results, I develop a model in which firms hire formal and informal workers with different costs. If these workers have a high degree of substitutability, and wages for formal workers are rigid, firms reallocate formal to informal employment as a response to lower informal wages. In settings with informal labor markets migration can therefore lead to asymmetric employment and wage effects across the informal and formal sectors.

What’s in a Network? Infrastructures of Mutual Aid for Digital Platform Workers during COVID-19

This paper examines the role played by informal mutual aid networks in mediating precarity for gig workers in Jakarta during COVID-19. Using an original survey of 350 mobility platform drivers conducted in May 2020 and a pre-pandemic set of semi-structured interviews with driver communities, I find that mutual aid dispersed through associative, informal labor networks became an essential infrastructure of support for drivers during the pandemic. Most drivers in Jakarta were able to mobilize pre-existing labor networks for extensive material and emotional support. However, results indicate this support was not universally accessible: the pre-pandemic structures of a driver’s community and the driver’s own participation within the community correlated with the magnitude of community support a driver reported receiving. By putting CSCW literature in conversation with broader literature on informal urbanism, this paper shows how informal labor networks and mutual aid can be a transformative, even outside of formal union structures. By analyzing the forms and limits of these networks this paper also carries lessons in how to build solidarity amongst distributed workforces. At the same time, this study highlights the role of local socio-economic context in shaping gig worker experiences of the pandemic. Thus, it points to the need for more contextually driven analysis of both gig worker precarity and what are deemed effective forms of labor solidarity

“The Time Machine” Social Innovation and Research-Creation Strategy for Risk Control in Informal Labor Communities

Strategies to control occupational risk factors face various challenges in terms of their application and effectiveness, even more so when it comes to providing risk-control solutions under informal working conditions. Purpose: explore opportunities presented by the use of social innovation strategies and methodologies derived from research-creation to establish educational control measures for occupational risk factors, for recovery and recycling workers in Bogotá (Colombia). Methods and procedures: There were two main phases for this research: one aimed to understand the different risk posed to informal labor communities based on workplace inspection and risk assessment norms NTC4114 and GTC45, the other one was aimed to develop a research-creation and social innovation-based strategy, to co-create innovative solutions to address risk factors with the informal workers New Results: Risk conditions were measured for the first time with this group of informal workers and a social innovation creation was made to control risk factors and to dignify working conditions Conclusions: Informal work has precarious and uncontrolled risk. In addition, the systematic exclusion of informal workers from public health labor systems organized by national governments means that protective measures for this group of people are often ineffective or inadequate, or in the worst case, non-existent.

Informal Labor and the Efficiency Cost of Social Programs: Evidence from Unemployment Insurance in Brazil

It is widely believed that the presence of a large informal sector increases the efficiency cost of social programs in developing countries. We evaluate such claims for the case of unemployment insurance (UI) by combining an optimal UI framework with comprehensive data from Brazil. Using quasi-experimental variation in potential UI duration, we find clear evidence for the usual moral hazard problem that UI reduces incentives to return to a formal job. Yet, the associated efficiency cost is lower than it is in the United States, and it is lower in labor markets with higher informality within Brazil. This is because formal reemployment rates are lower to begin with where informality is higher, so that a larger share of workers would draw UI benefits absent any moral hazard. In sum, efficiency concerns may actually become more relevant as an economy formalizes. (JEL J65, O15, O17, E26, D82, J46)