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- Convenors:
-
Maria Franchi
(University of Bath)
Joel Lazarus (Bath)
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- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Rethinking development approaches & practice
- Location:
- G51a, ground floor Main Building
- Sessions:
- Thursday 27 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
WorkFREE is a unique saturation pilot providing a basic income alongside participatory community work in some of the most vulnerable and marginalised urban communities. Our researchers will discuss the effects and impacts of this new approach on work, dignity, freedom, needs and gender relations.
Long Abstract:
In keeping with the DSA2024 theme of ‘Social Justice and Development in a Polarising World', this panel will illustrate and discuss the efficacy of a new development paradigm - 'UBI+'.
WorkFREE is a social experiment and research project to pilot what we call ‘UBI+’ in four informal slums in inner-city Hyderabad, India. With about 350 families/1250 individuals, this is India’s first basic income pilot in an urban setting, and one of the first in the world to achieve both universal community saturation, and pair an individual, unconditional and cash-based basic income with radical participatory community organising in order to support people to increase their power to meet their needs. This represents a new way of doing social policy, and a new way of doing UBI in South India. WorkFREE is studying the impacts of this UBI+ on people’s labour, relationships, needs-fulfilment, consumption, gender relations and a post-growth transition.
The project is based at the University of Bath, and run in partnership with the India Network for Basic Income, Montfort Social Institute and DAI Advisory Services. The project started in May 2022, and runs to the end of 2023, with mixed methods study at the start, middle and end of the pilot.
This panel will explore what a basic income in such contexts can look like, in particular in some of the most vulnerable and marginalised populations, and contribute to the consideration of rights and representation; redistribution and restoration; reproduction and production in development policy and practice.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 27 June, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
A feminist perspective on the transformative potential of WorkFREE's UBIPlus pilot
Paper long abstract:
Universal Basic Income, delivered as a universal regular unconditional cash payment to individuals, challenges the transactional power relationship with the donor in international development and provides for greater economic and social agency. A potential decolonialisation of development. However, within the context of a plethora of existing structural inequalities, can WorkFREE be considered to have developed a framework for a new paradigm in development?
The WorkFREE project could be characterised as an attempt to include a feminist methodology within the Basic Income piloting field. Whilst most UBI pilots focus on cash payments alone, the Plus provides facilitated participatory community-based meetings for recipients to discuss issues and ideas for their community.
The Plus draws on a long history of PAR and, central to that, a feminist tradition in development work – a focus on the relational – seeing participation in the political, economic and social domains as central to the emancipation of women (Fraser, 2017) rather than just their empowerment. I explore the design and praxis of the Plus from a feminist perspective.
In turn, my empirical work on the gendered impacts of WorkFREE, and the initial results I have gathered, add some light as to what might constitute a feminist UBI.
• The women and solidarity – also leisure time
• The women and roles in the family – marriage, VAWG, care, decision making.
• Women and investments in the future (wider economic agency)
I argue that the inclusion of the participatory, relational and needs focused in the design of the pilot underpins its transformative potential and contributes to the definition of WorkFREE as a feminist UBI.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will present findings from the mixed methods evaluation (3 rounds of qualitative and quantitative data) to explore the effects of the WorkFREE pilot on participants' experiences of dignity and labour choices.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation will aim to bring together findings from over 2 years of a mixed methods study situated within the WorkFREE project. It primarily aims to understand the effects of a basic income plus pilot the labour choices and experiences of (in)dignity in the lives of the urban poor. The lives of our participants, primarily garbage collectors, domestic workers and daily wagers in India are marked by extreme poverty, marginalisation and exclusion. At the intersection of caste, gender, poverty and little-to-no unionisation and social protection, these ‘self-employed’ workers’ labour choices are situated in the absence of meaningful alternatives. In this frame, UBI 'plus' is presented as a theoretical policy tool for decent work.
In this presentation I will present, first, this ground up understanding of freedom and dignity rooted in the words, relationships and experiences of those at the bottom of the ladder of labour and poverty. A view that takes a fundamentally relational lens to the framing and furthering of dignity as a policy goal. Second, the effects of the basic income on decisions around how labour is organised and the forms of ‘exit’ participants have in such situations. I explore how dignity and wellbeing is navigated in these contexts, and the role basic income plays in addressing the diverse pain points in the seemingly similar lives of our participants. Collectively, I will also reflect on cash and BI as a core piece of a new mosaic of social policy for the future.
Paper short abstract:
A presentation charting and reflecting on the journey of 'UBI Plus'
Paper long abstract:
In this presentation, I narrate the story of an experiment in unconditionality. It is the story of the journey of what we at WorkFREE call ‘UBI Plus’ – the combination of unconditional cash transfers with an unconditional approach to community organising that we piloted alongside NGO partners and our participant communities in Hyderabad over two years.
I first introduce this unconditional community organising endeavour as a relational, needs-based (RNB) approach to development/social work. I then juxtapose this RNB framework with hegemonic ‘Salvational Problem-Solving’ (SPS) practices. Next, I detail the implementation plan of our RNB or ‘Plus’ work and then offer a review of our major findings. I then share some reflections on the journey: on the nature of the major challenges we faced and the responses we developed. I conclude by arguing that, both despite and because of these challenges, we are more convinced than ever of the transformative potential of relational and unconditional approaches and, therefore, of the potential power of our UBI Plus model.
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the compatibility of UBI with post-development/sustainable welfare, specifically in relation to needs satisfaction. The paper uses data from the pilot to examine changes to human needs satisfaction and suggest implications for UBI as a post-development/sustainable welfare policy.
Paper long abstract:
This paper concerns the compatibility of UBI with post-development and sustainable welfare perspectives, i.e. the rejection of colonial approaches to development and the pursuit of economic growth at all costs and instead designing policies that achieve wellbeing for all within the limits of planetary boundaries.
Specifically, the paper focuses on changes to human needs satisfaction – one of the four key criteria for sustainable welfare policies (Buchs, 2021). Human needs approaches understand needs to be common to all people, across space and time, but the means for satisfying needs as infinitely varied, according to culture, context, resource availability, etc. (Max-Neef, 1991). Such approaches emerged from the post-development literature and are now widely advocated within post-growth and ecological economics.
The paper uses data was obtained through interviews and focus groups with participants of the WorkFREE pilot. Transcripts were analysed against Max-Neefs Humans Scale Development (HSD) framework to specifically identify changes in need satisfaction, as well as changes in the satisfiers and economic goods participants employed in meeting their respective needs. The results will be discussed in relation to UBI’s potential to increase needs satisfaction in line with post-growth and sustainable welfare perspectives – in other words, meeting needs without compromising personal or cultural autonomy and without putting unnecessary pressure on the rest of the natural world.