The panel will bring a series of papers to interrogate the ways in which urban informality is constituted beyond the economic sphere. Focusing on the social and institutional dimensions, a more comprehensive discussion will be developed to overcome the myth that informality is decreasing.
Long Abstract:
The panel invites papers that interrogate the ways in which urban informality is constituted beyond the economic sphere. Focusing on the social and institutional dimensions, a more comprehensive discussion will be developed to overcome the belief that informality is decreasing (i.e. Delechat & Medina, 2021).
The panel is open to contributors who are interested in addressing the following questions:
• How does the informal economy intersect with other dimensions of informality such as the institutional (i.e. regulation), material (i.e housing) and social (i.e. migration) and which provide opportunities to overcome periods of crisis regarding health, employment, care, etc.
• To what extent the presence/absence of the state is a factor defining how informality is interpreted and included in policy making?
• How do state institutions of policy-making contribute to informality beyond the economy?
• What forms of collective organization and knowledge are being developed around informality? For example, is collective organizing impacted by the work of NGOs or by legacies of trade unionism
• How are forms of collective organizing helping to shape and define urban space and urban policy around care, health, employment, mobility or planning?
• How are issues on intersectionality (i.e. gender, ethnicity) helping to explain reproduction and exploitation within and across the different dimensions of informality?
Panelists shall upload in advance their contributions following the conference's rules. During the session, each contributor will have 2 minutes to pitch their interventions or provocations. Contributors are expected to consult in advance to the session the other panelists' materials to develop an informed discussion.
Looking at the case of domestic workers in Addis Ababa, this paper examines:
-How such workers seek to contest exploitative relations
-What collectivities that they develop to this end, and their relationship with formal sector workers collectivities
-Their relationship to the state
Paper long abstract:
Collective contestation of informal work conditions in Addis Ababa: the case of domestic workers
Despite decades of rapid growth, Addis Ababa is a city in which informal and domestic work far outweighs formal work. A large share of the city's working population work without proper contracts, in conditions unrestrained by even the country's lax regulation of minimum conditions. Moreover, among that part of the population which indeed work under formalized labour contracts, abysmal formal sector wages means that informal additional work and opportunities most frequently constitutes an important aspect of total incomes. Nevertheless, conditions in informal sectors are typically exploitative and harsh. Not the least in sectors where female workers predominate and where the worker encounters the employer or client in isolation - such as in the case of domestic workers. In response, informal sector workers develop coping strategies that range from individual attempts to mitigate or avoid such conditions, to collective attempts to challenge and modify them.
Situating the collective agencies of informal workers within the broader urban political economy, and in their relationship with formal sector workers and the state, this paper aims to examine:
- How informal sector workers seek to avoid or contest exploitative relations.
- What collectivities that informal sectors workers develop to this end, and what their relationship with formal sector workers collectivities are:
- What their relationship to - and the role of - the state is.
We aim to do so by looking specifically at the case of domestic workers.
In this paper, by drawing on recent fieldwork research in Pueblo Unido, a popular neighbourhood that grew on an occupied land in the greater Buenos Aires area, we plan to put in evidence and describe the organizational mechanisms through which the neighbourhood has been able to survive informality
Paper long abstract:
Informality is a relatively new social dimension for Argentina, strictly connected with the descent of the country into debt dependent neoliberalism from the mid 1970s. In the course of the last fifty years labour and economic informality have consolidated, de facto producing the existence of an underclass of workers and citizens living on the poverty line. However, an history of working class mobilizations and the presence of a strong trade unions movement connected with Peronism have made the struggle against informality and precariousness a contested terrain in which state and social movement actors play an active though often contradictory role. In this paper, by drawing on recent fieldwork research in Pueblo Unido, a popular neighbourhood that grew on an occupied land in the greater Buenos Aires area, we plan to put in evidence and describe the organizational mechanisms through which the neighbourhood has been able to survive informality at a time of extreme economic and social stress. The focus on these organizational mechanisms will help to give insights into the contradictory relations existing between state policy and state involvement in redressing labour and economic informality and the political horizons of social movements action.
The paper proposes a methodological framework to identify, understand and analyse the different collective organising practices of informal workers in their everyday survival strategies under urban precarity and poverty in Bangalore, Buenos Aires and Addis Ababa.
Paper long abstract:
The paper aims to explore and begin to develop the methodological framework of the project Surviving the Informal City (StIC). This project aims to identify, understand and analyse the different collective organising practices of informal workers in their everyday survival strategies under urban precarity and poverty in Bangalore, Buenos Aires and Addis Ababa. In particular, the project puts emphasis on three aspects: workers' forms of collective organisation and knowledge; social reproduction and forms of gendered exploitation in worker's lives; and workers' engagement with state resources as well as the state's responses to their engagement. The comparison across cities this project entails has drawn attention to studies on 'relational comparison' (Robinson, 2011, 2016; Hart 2006, 2018; Streule, 2020). For this project, relationality is understood at two levels. In a social infrastructural sense, in which the relations that informal workers develop in their everyday sustain urban life, often outside formal state and market institutions (Latham & Lamont 2019; DeVerteuil & Mizuuchi 2020); and in a geographical sense, in which relations are constituted between and across places, identities or events through power-laden practices and discourses (Hart, 2006:996). The paper justifies the value of relational comparison given the aims of StIC project, while discussing different approaches on how to develop relational comparison within the project's aims.
The paper argues private regulators are successful in dismantling trade unions and push formal source of workers mobilisation to the periphery, making them informal. Thus, the study uses the case of two radio station NGOs to revive the lost pride of trade unionism in Tiruppur by being inclusive.
Paper long abstract:
Gram Vanni and Radio Active 90.4 MHz are two civil society organisations, they host radio shows exclusively on workers' violation. The outreach of these organisations are 18000 and 200 callers daily. Gram Vanni operates in Chennai city and in other districts of Tamil Nadu, whereas Radio Active 90.4 MHz is active in Bengaluru city. The study conducts 140 interviews from March 2020 to June 2021 using mobile and zoom calls. The primary data includes 120 migrant and local workers, 20 informants, comprising, contractors, merchandisers, volunteers of civil society organisation, and a program manager. The secondary data is gathered from YouTube videos, news articles, and podcast shows. The study shows that migrants live in a 10x10 feet room. When a worker is tested positive, it became unmanageable. In government hospitals, the preference is given to local than migrant workers. Although, the civil society organisations arranged space for isolation, restriction on mobility made impossible for volunteers to reach far away placed migrants. During the pandemic, these NGOs provided some basic essentials besides mobile hotline numbers for counselling, information on vaccination, symptoms, oxygen supply, and medicine availability. Male migrant workers used social networking to overcome precarity when government failed. These conditions led to a rise in bonded labour, widening the wage gap, increase in verbal abuse, growing living expenses, and denial of social security. Using airwaves, migrant and local workers could rise their voice and there is no fear of losing the job, yet address the issue of informality.
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Short Abstract:
The panel will bring a series of papers to interrogate the ways in which urban informality is constituted beyond the economic sphere. Focusing on the social and institutional dimensions, a more comprehensive discussion will be developed to overcome the myth that informality is decreasing.
Long Abstract:
The panel invites papers that interrogate the ways in which urban informality is constituted beyond the economic sphere. Focusing on the social and institutional dimensions, a more comprehensive discussion will be developed to overcome the belief that informality is decreasing (i.e. Delechat & Medina, 2021).
The panel is open to contributors who are interested in addressing the following questions:
• How does the informal economy intersect with other dimensions of informality such as the institutional (i.e. regulation), material (i.e housing) and social (i.e. migration) and which provide opportunities to overcome periods of crisis regarding health, employment, care, etc.
• To what extent the presence/absence of the state is a factor defining how informality is interpreted and included in policy making?
• How do state institutions of policy-making contribute to informality beyond the economy?
• What forms of collective organization and knowledge are being developed around informality? For example, is collective organizing impacted by the work of NGOs or by legacies of trade unionism
• How are forms of collective organizing helping to shape and define urban space and urban policy around care, health, employment, mobility or planning?
• How are issues on intersectionality (i.e. gender, ethnicity) helping to explain reproduction and exploitation within and across the different dimensions of informality?
Panelists shall upload in advance their contributions following the conference's rules. During the session, each contributor will have 2 minutes to pitch their interventions or provocations. Contributors are expected to consult in advance to the session the other panelists' materials to develop an informed discussion.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 7 July, 2022, -