Cab fair: taxi driving and South Asian labor activism in New York City, 1985–1999

Abstract

The labor strike of 13 May 1998 was an historic event for the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA). Under the leadership of Bhairavi Desai, 98% of New York City’s 24,000 yellow cab drivers refused to work. The strike disrupted the flow of city life, but it also shattered the belief that taxi drivers were atomized and therefore unable to organize, effectively exercise power, or earn basic working rights for themselves. This unprecedented strike was thus an act of self-assertion for taxicab drivers in the 1990s, who were predominantly of South Asian origin and had been victims of unjust violence and discrimination in the city. This article questions how immigrant taxi cab drivers came to cooperate with one another in the late nineties to fight for fair wages. It also explores how members of the NYTWA overcame class disparities and ethnic differences among themselves to serve common goals.     

Modernising subordination? A South Asian perspective on the World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development

The World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development argues that the solution to rural poverty in South Asia is through commercial smallholder farming, rural waged labour in farm and non-farm activities, or outmigration. Critically evaluating the Report from a South Asian perspective on the basis of agrarian structure, market-led agrarian transformation, the power of monopoly capital, and the option of off-farm livelihoods, it is argued that the Report has a deeply flawed understanding of the process of capitalist development in rural South Asia. Its path-dependent vision of the future of agriculture is rooted in modernisation theory, and predicated on the continued subordination of the majority of those who live in the South Asian countryside.     

Effect of Early Child Care and Education Attendance Hours on Parent–Child Interaction in Central Asia: Evaluation of Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys

Parent–child interaction is important for early childhood development and best practice in early child care and education (ECCE) promotes effective parent–child interaction. However, research about ECCE impact on parent–child interaction is inconclusive. This study analyzed data from Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) to examine the effect of ECCE attendance on parent–child interactions in Central Asia, using a 2SLS regression analysis to explicitly model selection bias and isolate the causal effect of ECCE on the quality of parent–child interactions.The study found that increased hours of ECCE led to increased parent–child interaction in every country under investigation. This demonstrates that even underfunded ECCE programs in Central Asia can have significant positive effect, and has broader implications for all ECCE programs.     

Exit from agriculture: a step forward or a step backward for the rural poor?

World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development recommends that rural smallholders unable to compete in higher value production should exit agriculture. For the old and new landless, the way forward is wage labour in agriculture, in rural off farm work, or in urban areas. Disjunctively, the Report also proposes ‘farm-financed social welfare’ as a safety net when urban workers are ejected back to countryside at times of ‘urban shock’. My essay contrasts the Report's narrative about felicitous trajectories away from and back to the farm with the historical and contemporary experience of Asia's rural poor.     

Women and Asylum: A Particular Social Group

This note examines the judgement of the House of Lords in the cases of Islam andShah, particularly with regard to their conclusion that women in Pakistan who were victims of domestic violence and not protected by their state could qualify as members of a particular social group under the Geneva Convention, and therefore attain refugee status. The note considers the Refugee Women's Legal Group's Gender Guidelines for the Determination of Asylum Claims in the U.K. and discusses the problems faced by women who claim refugee status. Finally, the conceptualisation of domestic violence as a political issue and therefore a matter falling within the scope of the Convention issue is analysed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Feminism and the Gender Recognition Act 2004

This paper argues, first, that the legal construction of transsexualism is a matter of interest, not only to members of the trans community, but to all students of gender, including feminists. The paper then proceeds to explain and analyse, using feminist perspectives, key aspects of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 in the light of the recent caselaw concerning the rights of trans persons. The 2004 Act, it is argued, is a conservative move, which attempts to deny the threat transsexualism poses to the binary system of gender, by instigating a system to formally ‘recognise’ only men and or women. However, the way in which the Act constructs the public/private divide and the mind/body relation carries potential for legal recognition of subject positions which may in a variety of ways be ‘beyond’ the binary system that is currently orthodox. The paper can as such be read as a case study in the legal (re)construction of gender, the gender/sex relation, and the widespread tendency to construct gender conservatively.     

第九届亚洲社会论坛综述

在经济全球化和区域合作不断发展的背景下,在亚洲各国和地区,以三方协商机制为主的社会对话与合作,应当以保障劳动者合法权益、促进劳动关系的和谐发展为目标,建立诚实互信的社会环境以及完善相关立法.在具体的制度建设上,不同国家和地区可以选择不同形式,积极探索与自身情况相适应的劳动关系协调模式.