Paper short abstract:

An integral element of Korean social fabric is senior-junior dependencies—an age-graded, patronage-like relationship between seniors and juniors within fixed-membership institutions. Praised as beautiful cross-cohort care, the practice is also ambivalently juxtaposed to dominant neoliberal values.

Paper long abstract:

An integral element of the South Korean social fabric is the senior-junior dependencies—an age-graded patronage-like relationship between seniors (sŏnbae) and juniors (hubae) within institutions of fixed membership, such as high schools, universities, and workplaces. Within this relationship, seniors are not merely older; they command authority and use their presumably higher social standing to help juniors with resources and opportunities, whereas juniors are to repay with loyalty and whatever favors seniors might request—and both parties perform care for each other. Practiced by virtually all Koreans, senior-junior ties serve as gateways to social and professional advancement and provide a vital safety net. Many Koreans extol the ubiquitous senior-junior culture as a beautiful practice of cross-cohort care, connecting it to the traditional morality of native humanism. As such, it is often juxtaposed to neoliberal individualism and competitiveness, which have become hegemonic in South Korea since the 1990s. Yet the senior-junior culture also occasionally becomes a focal point for criticisms, which denounce it as old-fashioned, irrational, and nepotistic, ostensibly hindering the achievement of a meritocratic and equitable society and perpetuating cliquism in hiring. I explore these ambivalences via in-depth interviews with middle-class South Koreans. The paper analyzes their experiences of negotiating the “traditional” morality and practices that embrace the asymmetrical cross-cohort dependencies against the late-capitalist values, which prize individualism, autonomy, and merit-based competition, particularly in the sphere of employment. The study illuminates how the historical practice of cross-cohort dependencies both helps and impedes South Koreans in navigating the contingencies of late capitalism.

Paper short abstract:

Interpersonal ties between Ethiopian domestic workers and employers are complex, with power dynamics and protection coexisting. Informed by ethnographic research in Ethiopia, this study explores hierarchical relations of interdependence through testimonies of both domestic workers and employers.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic research in Ethiopia, this contribution illustrates the hierarchical interdependence relationships between domestic workers and their employers. From childhood, the women I interviewed move from rural to urban areas to work as domestic workers in both kin and non-kin households. Working conditions vary, ranging from situations where female workers are exposed to severe forms of exploitation to others where they can negotiate better conditions. For some women, establishing new relationships with affluent people in the city may be a way of obtaining some form of protection that would otherwise be inaccessible.

The interpersonal relationships they create with employers are often ambiguous, involving negotiated hierarchical interdependence where practices of power, domination, subordination, care, and protection coexist. Many employers tend to describe themselves as protective "family members," offering opportunities for a better life in the city to poor village girls. The rhetoric about fostering practices contributes to masking labor relations. Domestic workers, on one hand, define the people they work for as protective individuals to whom they show gratitude and recognition. On the other hand, they may threaten to leave the home of their employers, feeling over-exploited in terms of both work and social gratification.

The contribution reflects on hierarchical relations of interdependence by referring to both the testimonies of domestic workers and those of the people they work for.

Paper short abstract:

The research explores debt advisors' guidance for over-indebted households in Northern Hungary. These strategies combine formal legal advice with informal techniques, such as establishing dependent relations with one's social network to mitigate the adverse effects of judicial debt collection.

Paper long abstract:

Household over-indebtedness and judicial debt collection in Hungary affect around 700,000 people through wage garnishment – a forced 33% or 50% deduction of wages exceeding the living minimum amount (160 euros per month). This phenomenon disproportionately impacts the populations of villages in Northern Hungary, entangling inhabitants in debt traps, resulting in exclusion from formal wage labour and diminished incomes. A few non-governmental organizations offer debt advice in Hungary in the region.

The central inquiry of this research explores how households navigate and sustain their livelihoods amidst such an illiquid economic environment. Furthermore, the research investigates the advice and strategies debt advisors extend to debtors who cannot meet present and future payment obligations. Through comprehensive 12-month ethnographic fieldwork, the research relies on interviews with debtors and social workers and participant observation with debt advisors in Budapest and Northern Hungary. Across 130 meetings with nine debt advisors in two organizations, engaging around 170 debtors in 22 villages and two large cities, the study sheds light on debt advisors’ multifaceted approaches.

The findings underscore that debt advisors offer legal guidance to contest debt collectors, aiming to reduce debts and suspend wage garnishment. When such legal guidance fails to improve financial situations, debtors are further informed about additional ways to avoid wage garnishment, mainly through legal techniques for establishing dependent financial relationships with family, friends, neighbours, employers, and even the local state. These strategies aim to mitigate the adverse effects of judicial debt collection while reshaping social relations and upending hierarchies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which ‘routine’ and ‘familiarity’ are maintained through narratives and life stories, and how narratives of biographical pasts and potential futures map out the temporalities of interdependence and imaginations of the future in North Manchester, England.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on over a decade of ethnographic research in a social housing estate in North Manchester, England, with families who rely upon state welfare benefits to make ends meet. Drawing on an ethnographic example of a man who ‘sofa surfs’ in family members’ homes, this paper explores the ways in which his family come together to manage and maintain a sense of familiarity, care and routine for him as he struggles with self-care and his mental health. Specifically, this paper analyses the preoccupations and narratives of his wellbeing and his future, often expressed through labours of care, and discusses the following three points, ethnographically: Firstly, the labours of care that are done to establish and maintain a routine, including the rituals of preparation for his arrival in their homes contribute to a shared sense of his agency and autonomy in what would otherwise be confusing, contradictory circumstances. Secondly, in/through stories of his life, he appears as a ‘character-in-a-plot’ that is both passive and responsible at once. Finally, the labours of care are productive in that a moral incapacity is collectively cultivated by his family through the provision of routine care and support to him, and provide an opportunity for collective reflection on what his and their own lives could have turned out like, had events in their lives been different. This paper demonstrates the ways in which articulations of ‘routine’ and ‘familiarity’ forged through narratives, map out many temporalities of interdependence and imaginations of the future.

Paper short abstract:

Based on extended fieldwork in Roma communities of small Hungarian towns, our presentation demonstrates that dependent relationships are just as crucial for social mobility as the education system.

Paper long abstract:

Most research on social mobility mainly focuses on the challenges of advancing socially through education. The concept of social mobility through education assumes that individuals are autonomous and strive to achieve their potential within the confines of existing structural limitations. Based on extended fieldwork within Roma communities of peripheral Hungarian small towns, our presentation demonstrates that dependent relationships are just as crucial for social mobility as the education system, which assumes autonomous individuals. Our research suggests that small towns' social relations and institutions play an essential role in the mobility strategies of the disadvantaged local Roma population. These strategies, however, tend to embed individuals in local clientelist relationships, which can contrast mobility strategies based on education. The presentation illustrates the dilemmas and contradictions between these two strategies by examining cases of Roma entrepreneurs and their families. The preliminary results show that informal and familiar relations protect against racial discrimination. However, it is important to present how these relations can reinforce local ethnic and class hierarchies. Our presentation primarily examines the impact of dependent relationships and clientelism on the social mobility strategies of the disadvantaged Roma population. Additionally, it explores how these relationships shape social relations in small peripheral towns and extend to broader political and economic power structures across the country.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation challenges the negative perception of dependence, showcasing how certain relationships foster trust and reduce inequality. Drawing from research among Romanian Roma and Hungarian minorities, it highlights positive interethnic dependencies, countering prevailing stereotypes.

Paper long abstract:

Dependence is often conceptualized as a negative social relationship or social structure that involves hierarchy, dominance, and subordination. Power relations and authority are often used to maintain and reinforce inequality in hierarchical societies or communities. This type of relationship has often been associated with marginalized, poor, and highly discriminated groups, leading to their stigmatization. For instance, terms like 'welfare dependency' are often used to refer to migrants, the Roma, the poor, and so on.

In my presentation, I aim to challenge this one-sided perspective and the associated moral panic discourse. I will emphasize that not all dependent relationships are marked by subordination and exploitation. Instead, there are instances where this relationship can foster mutual trust and support, thus contributing to reducing inequality.

To support my argument, I will present the findings of ethnographic research conducted among the Romanian Roma and Hungarian minorities. I will present cases of interethnic Godparenthood or patron-client relationships that can be described as dependent relationships. These cases challenge ethnic prejudices and local ethnic hierarchy, providing a counterexample to dominant notions of dependence as an inherently exploitative construct.

Paper short abstract:

Based on the unfortunate story of two petty traders involved in a rich man's election campaign, this paper revisits the idea of patronage as a mode of employment. It shows how such relationships of dependency are rooted in a morality of inequality and discusses their promises and perils.

Paper long abstract:

When Dinda and Ahmad became part of Pak Myron's election campaign, they thought they were in luck. It was their chance to enter the social circle of a wealthy businessman, earn his favor, and gain access to resources otherwise out of their reach. All they had to do was hand out microcredits to secure strategic votes for their candidate. The program had all been set up by Pak Myron, funded by a large state-owned company's corporate responsibility program to empower small businesses, according to the official purpose. Dinda and Ahmad were flattered to be entrusted with a program of such scope and financial magnitude, and dazzled by Pak Myron's generosity. Therefore, it never occurred to them that "buying" votes through loans might be a questionable endeavor. Nor did it ever occur to them that the rich man who had lavished them with gifts might turn on them and leave them alone to vouch for the loans made in his name.

My paper traces the complex dynamics of the relationship between Dinda and Ahmad and the wealthy Pak Myron as a case of patronage employment - which I understand as a mode of employment that is based on a morality of inequality and operates through the socio-economic asymmetry between a ‘patron’ employer and a ‘client’ employee. It shows that such dependency relationships are not only a last resort in the struggle for livelihoods, but also a projection screen for futures that otherwise seem unattainable.

Paper short abstract:

I discuss the perception and negotiation of in/dependence by Ni-Vanuatu temporary labour migrants at different scales. First, how relations of dependence are cultivated by workers and employers alike. Secondly, migration as an alternative to dependence on ‘handouts’ at local and national scales.

Paper long abstract:

While temporary migration programmes have been promoted as an alternative to aid in facilitating economic development, they have long been critiqued by scholars and unions for exploiting reserve pools of cheap labour, and for fostering relations of dependency between sending and receiving nations, and between migrants and employers. Temporary migration programs have been criticised for forcing workers to depend on a single employer and denying many of the rights and freedoms owed to citizens, and thus fostering conditions for exploitation and unfreedom. Drawing on 16 months’ fieldwork with Ni-Vanuatu engaged in New Zealand’s seasonal worker programme, I will discuss how arguments around dependence operate to articulate aspirations for economic prosperity and development, at different scales. First, I draw on anthropological discussions of dependence as a ‘mode of action’ (Ferguson 2013; 2015: 97) to reveal how relations of reciprocal dependence are actively cultivated and maintained by Ni-Vanuatu workers as well as employers, often figured in idioms and practices of kinship and hospitality. Secondly, I discuss how labour migration is welcomed by many in Vanuatu as an alternative to dependence on ‘handouts’ and aid, at both local and national scales.

Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to set up a conceptual framework for dependent relations and the everyday moral evaluations of hierarchical incorporation including the exchange of personal favours and the impersonal forms of service provision.

Paper long abstract:

Instances of crises and various forms of moral deliberation are intertwined and mutually provoke one another. Our paper engages with the moral economy of clientelism and dependent relations amid multiple crises of livelihood and social reproduction. Research settings such as post-socialist and illiberal Hungary invite a perspective that considers the routinization and everyday management of crises through the cultivation of durable dependencies that pacify social antagonisms. After 2010, the labour activation scheme known as the ‘public work program’ aimed to re-involve surplus populations into the ‘world of work’, as a major showcase of the way illiberal-paternalist rule came to be solidified in Hungary. So far, the 2020s witnessed the diversification of dependent relations facilitated by the state and the market, including the agents of formal and informal brokers intermediating in the field of state subsidized loans or (in)formal work recruitment as new forms of clientelism.

Based on historical review as well as ethnographic research, we reconstruct forms of clientelism that represent different variants of the primary or ‘root form’ of the patron-client relation, connecting problem-holders and problem-solvers who exchange certain guarantees for security and well-being on the one hand and loyalty and support on the other. As we argue, clientelism and the patron-client relation may serve as a useful ideal type for studying the moral economy of political and economic forms of dependence and the everyday moral evaluations of hierarchical incorporation including the exchange of personal favours and the impersonal forms of service provision.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines forced migrants in the German music industry. Their life stories illustrate how migrants navigate different ‘regimes of value’. Based on ethnographic work with professional musicians, I present their trajectory from strategic dependence to creative autonomy.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how forced migrants negotiate dependent relationships across social spheres to pursue economic and personal autonomy. It examines this question through ethnographic work conducted with professional musicians in Germany. These life stories illustrate broader processes that define flexible capitalism: ‘undoing’ previous positionalities, recasting identities, and exerting agency in complex social fields. Such experiences in the context of displacement not only reveal a field’s underlying social structures, but also how they may be changed.

Public imagination romanticises artists as the epitome of freedom, valuing their work above debased transactional commodities. But musicians tell a different story. Value is determined less by one’s artistic quality and more by how one navigates ‘regimes of value’ (Appadurai 1986) in multiple constellations of dependencies. In the paper I discuss three spheres of dependency. On the interpersonal level, a musician’s value is chiefly determined through winning social recognition and exchange. On the institutional level, the government and its diversity politics determine value through grants and subsidies – reproducing economic dependencies and categories of difference. The third category are migration-specific, including relations to ethnic minority groups and the state apparatus via asylum procedures, citizenship applications, unemployment, etc.

Many musicians cast moral judgement on those who simply ‘play the game’ or manoeuvre in these spheres solely for financial gain. But many admit that the path to artistic freedom requires a certain degree of dependency and entanglement. Some have achieved this desired autonomy, others are still playing the same old tune.

Paper short abstract:

Based on a case-study of Bangladeshi workers at a shipbuilding site Italy, the research highlights the interplay of irregular immigration and exploitative labor practices, which undoes the history of bonded labor in South Asia while doing new forms of dependency in the context of global capitalism.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the emerging dynamics of dependent relations amidst flexible capitalism and clientelism, focusing on the experiences of low-skilled refugees and migrant laborers. By delving into a case study of Bangladeshi workers at a prominent shipbuilding company in Genoa, Italy, the research highlights the complex interplay of global economic trends and localized socio-political structures. The plight of these migrants, trapped in a web of irregular immigration and exploitative labor practices, echoes the historical contours of bonded labor in South Asia, while simultaneously manifesting new forms of dependency in the context of global capitalism.

The study utilizes ethnographic methods, including interviews and participant observation, to unveil the nuanced realities faced by these migrant workers, who navigate through a maze of legal uncertainties and socio-economic vulnerabilities, oftentimes resorting to new forms of clientelistic bondage. This situation is not a mere replication of historical bonded labor, but a contemporary reconfiguration that incorporates elements of transnational mobility and neoliberal market forces (Gardner, 2018; Lewis&Hossein, 2022).

Furthermore, the research critically examines the role of patronage in irregular immigration, suggesting that it operates as a double-edged sword – providing necessary support for migrants while simultaneously perpetuating their subjugation (Rashid, 2012; Roy, 2017). The case study of the Genoa shipbuilding company serves as a microcosm, shedding light on broader trends of labor exploitation and dependency relations in the age of flexible capitalism. This paper calls for a reevaluation of labor policies and immigration laws, aiming to mitigate the exploitative conditions that many low-skilled migrant workers endure.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork among Romani groups in Eastern Slovakia and transnational networks in Great Britain, this paper asks how migration reconfigures hierarchies and dependencies crucial both for survival strategies and social reproduction of inequalities among the poor Romani networks.

Paper long abstract:

This paper asks what happens when a historically sedimented pattern of (inter)dependencies transform under rapidly changing conditions and effects of transnational migration. Drawing on fieldwork among Romani groups in East Slovakia and transnational networks in Great Britain, this paper examines how migration contributes to transformation of the existing social and racialized hierarchies and asymmetrical inter-dependencies crucial for survival strategies among the poor Romani networks. This historical configuration related to their dependencies on more powerful non-Roma villagers and/or on Romani families with certain degree of upward socio-economic mobilities. In the first case, dependencies related to successful accumulation of ‘gadjikano’ capital (connected to more powerful non-Roma actors and institutions). The second type of dependencies related to family and social ties among Romani networks. Since the 1990s in the rural areas of CEE, many economic strategies among the poor Roma became more precarious, insecure and over-reliant on these networks that facilitated types of labour, exploitation and predatory indebtness. These relationships were also embedded within and shaped by wider moralizing and racializing discourses of ‘welfare dependence’. The expansion of transnational migration to Great Britain (since early 2000s) generated new flows of people, goods and capitals and reconfigured these pre-existing interdependencies. The paper examines what some migrants described as ‘tied has turned’ and analyse how the returning migrants and transnational networks reconfigured some of these dependencies but also deepened social differentiations in their struggles to re-cast certain relationships from those previously seen as being ones of dependence to ones of non‐dependence, refusal or reversal.