Informal Markets, Livelihood and Politics

Informal Markets, Livelihood and Politics PDF Author: Debdulal Saha
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1134865082
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Low industrial growth, declining agricultural sector and limited expansion of formal sector employment in India have increasingly forced the poor to take recourse to informal sources of livelihoods. Street vending is one such thriving source of self-employment across cities. This book delves into the sustenance and survival strategies of street vendors across 17 cities in India and assesses the issues revolving around self-created markets, livelihood and politics that are contested in public space. It also presents a conceptual and theoretical understanding of different socio-economic and policy concerns pertaining to street vending in the country. The study shows how despite the absence of legal frameworks and institutional support, these urban self-employed informal workers subsist by arranging ad-hoc alternatives, creating informal institutions and negotiating with formal and informal actors in the market. It also discusses the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, and examines how inclusive the legal recognition is for these workers of informal economy. Drawing on exhaustive research and a wealth of primary data, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers in development studies, labour studies, economics, sociology and those in public policy and urban planning.

Informal Markets, Livelihood and Politics

Informal Markets, Livelihood and Politics PDF Author: Debdulal Saha
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134865015
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Low industrial growth, declining agricultural sector and limited expansion of formal sector employment in India have increasingly forced the poor to take recourse to informal sources of livelihoods. Street vending is one such thriving source of self-employment across cities. This book delves into the sustenance and survival strategies of street vendors across 17 cities in India and assesses the issues revolving around self-created markets, livelihood and politics that are contested in public space. It also presents a conceptual and theoretical understanding of different socio-economic and policy concerns pertaining to street vending in the country. The study shows how despite the absence of legal frameworks and institutional support, these urban self-employed informal workers subsist by arranging ad-hoc alternatives, creating informal institutions and negotiating with formal and informal actors in the market. It also discusses the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, and examines how inclusive the legal recognition is for these workers of informal economy. Drawing on exhaustive research and a wealth of primary data, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers in development studies, labour studies, economics, sociology and those in public policy and urban planning.

The Global Informal Workforce

The Global Informal Workforce PDF Author: International Monetary Fund
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513575910
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
The Global Informal Workforce is a fresh look at the informal economy around the world and its impact on the macroeconomy. The book covers interactions between the informal economy, labor and product markets, gender equality, fiscal institutions and outcomes, social protection, and financial inclusion. Informality is a widespread and persistent phenomenon that affects how fast economies can grow, develop, and provide decent economic opportunities for their populations. The COVID-19 pandemic has helped to uncover the vulnerabilities of the informal workforce.

The Informal Post-Socialist Economy

The Informal Post-Socialist Economy PDF Author: Jeremy Morris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135009295
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
From smugglers to entrepreneurs, blue-collar workers and taxi drivers, this book deals with the multitude of characters engaged in informal economic practices in the former socialist regions. Going beyond a conception of informality as opposed to the formal sector, its authors demonstrate the fluid nature of informal transactions straddling the crossroads between illegal, illicit, socially acceptable and symbolically meaningful practices. Their argument is informed by a wide range of case studies, from Central Europe to the Baltics and Central Asia, each of which is constructed around a single informant. Each chapter narrates the story of a composite person or household that was carefully selected or constructed by an author with long-standing ethnographic research experience in the given field site. Wide in geographical, empirical and theoretical scope, the book uses ethnographic narrative accounts of everyday life to make links between ‘ordinary’ meanings of informality. Challenging reductively economistic perspectives on cross-border trading, undeclared work and other informal activities, the authors illustrate the wide variety of interpretive meanings that people ascribe to such practices. Alongside ‘getting by’ and ‘getting ahead’ in recently marketised societies, these meanings relate to sociality, kinship-ties and solidarity, along with more surprising ‘political’ and moral reasonings.

Africa's Informal Workers

Africa's Informal Workers PDF Author: Ilda Lindell
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848138334
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Africa's Informal Workers is a vigorous examination of the informalization and casualization of work, which is changing livelihoods in Africa and beyond. Gathering cases from nine countries and cities across sub-Saharan Africa, and from a range of sectors, this volume goes beyond the usual focus on household ‘coping strategies’ and individual agency, addressing the growing number of collective organizations through which informal workers make themselves visible and articulate their demands and interests. The emerging picture is that of a highly diverse landscape of organized actors, providing grounds for tension but also opportunities for alliance. The collection examines attempts at organizing across the formal-informal work spheres, and explores the novel trend of transnational organizing by informal workers. Part of the ground-breaking Africa Now series, Africa’s Informal Workers is a timely exploration of deep, ongoing economic, political and social transformations.

The Routledge Handbook on Livelihoods in the Global South

The Routledge Handbook on Livelihoods in the Global South PDF Author: Fiona Nunan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000581543
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 713

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook on Livelihoods in the Global South presents a unique, timely, comprehensive overview of livelihoods in low- and middle-income countries. Since their widespread adoption in the 1990s, livelihoods perspectives, frameworks and methods have influenced diverse areas of research, policy and practice. The concept of livelihoods reflects the complexity of strategies and practices used by individuals, households and communities to meet their needs and live their lives. The Handbook brings together insights and critical analysis from diverse approaches and experiences, learning from research and practice over the last 30 years. The Handbook comprises an introductory section on key concepts and frameworks, followed by five parts, on researching livelihoods, negotiating livelihoods, generating livelihoods, enabling livelihoods and contextualising livelihoods. The introduction provides readers with an appreciation of concepts researched and applied in the five parts, including chapters on vulnerability and resilience, social capital and networks, and institutions. Each part reflects the diversity of approaches taken to understanding livelihoods, whilst recognising commonalities, including the centrality of power in shaping, enabling and constraining livelihoods. The book also reflects diversity of context, including conflict, climate change and religion, as well as in generating livelihoods, through agriculture, small-scale mining and pastoralism. The aim of each chapter is to provide a critically informed introduction and overview of key concepts, issues and debates of relevance to the topic, with each chapter concluding with suggestions for further reading. It will be an essential resource to students, researchers and practitioners of international development and related fields. Researchers and practitioners will also benefit from the book's diverse disciplinary contributions and by the wide and contemporary coverage.

Work, Institutions and Sustainable Livelihood

Work, Institutions and Sustainable Livelihood PDF Author: Virginius Xaxa
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811057567
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
The book explores the debates surrounding sustainable livelihood in the neoliberal era effected through transformation of the nature of work and the role of institutions, particularly in the Global South. By creating gainful work and employment opportunities through formal and informal institutions using progressive instruments and innovations within rural and urban economies, livelihood becomes ‘sustainable’, thereby reducing inequality and increasing resilience among households. Based on both theoretical and empirical studies from Asia and Africa, the book establishes the relationship between three broad concepts – work, institutions and sustainable development. The content has been divided into three broad sections: Rural Economy and Its Transformations; Urbanisation and Sustainable Livelihood; and Innovations and Instruments of Transformation. This book is a valuable resource for scholars of development studies, rural and urban studies, labour studies besides economics, sociology, political science and policymaking.

Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa

Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa PDF Author: Mary Njeri Kinyanjui
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1780326335
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In this highly original work, Mary Njeri Kinyanjui explores the trajectory of women's movement from the margins of urbanization into the centres of business activities in Nairobi and its accompanying implications for urban planning. While women in much of Africa have struggled to gain urban citizenship and continue to be weighed down by poor education, low income and confinement to domestic responsibilities due to patriarchic norms, a new form of urban dynamism - partly informed by the informal economy - is now enabling them to manage poverty, create jobs and link to the circuits of capital and labour. Relying on social ties, reciprocity, sharing and collaboration, women's informal 'solidarity entrepreneurialism' is taking them away from the margins of business activity and catapulting them into the centre. Bringing together key issues of gender, economic informality and urban planning in Africa, Kinyanjui demonstrates that women have become a critical factor in the making of a postcolonial city.

Precarious Labour and Informal Economy

Precarious Labour and Informal Economy PDF Author: Smita Yadav
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319779710
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
An empirical account of one of India’s largest indigenous populations, this book tells the story of the Gonds—who currently face displacement and governmental control of the region’s forests, which has crippled their economy. Rather than protesting and calling for state intervention, the Gonds have turned toward an informal economy: they not only engage with flexible forms of work, but also bargain for higher wages and experience agency and autonomy. Smita Yadav conceives of this withdrawal from the state in favour of precarious forms of work as an expression of anarchy by this marginalized population. Even as she provides rich detail of the Gonds’ unusual working lives, which integrate work, labour, and debt practices with ideologies of family and society, Yadav illustrates the strength required to maintain dignity when a welfare state has failed.

The Informal Economy Revisited

The Informal Economy Revisited PDF Author: Martha Chen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429575386
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
This landmark volume brings together leading scholars in the field to investigate recent conceptual shifts, research findings and policy debates on the informal economy as well as future challenges and directions for research and policy. Well over half of the global workforce and the vast majority of the workforce in developing countries work in the informal economy, and in countries around the world new forms of informal employment are emerging. Yet the informal workforce is not well understood, remains undervalued and is widely stigmatised. Contributors to the volume bridge a range of disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, development economics, law, political science, social policy, sociology, statistics, urban planning and design. The Informal Economy Revisited also focuses on specific groups of informal workers, including home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers, to provide a grounded insight into disciplinary debates. Ultimately, the book calls for a paradigm shift in how the informal economy is perceived to reflect the realities of informal work in the Global South, as well as the informal practices of the state and capital, not just labour. The Informal Economy Revisited is the culmination of 20 years of pioneering work by WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing), a global network of researchers, development practitioners and organisations of informal workers in 90 countries. Researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and advocates will all find this book an invaluable guide to the significance and complexities of the informal economy, and its role in today’s globalised economy. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429200724, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license