Hooking Workers and Hooking Votes: Enganche,Suffrage, and Labor Market Dualism in Latin America

Labor market dualism—the segmentation of workers between formal, legally protected employment and informal, unprotected status—has long drawn attention from scholars and policymakers in Latin America. This article argues that lasting patterns of economic and political segmentation of workers arose earlier in the region's history than has previously been understood, well before the classic “incorporation” period. Late‐nineteenth‐century practices for the recruitment and retention of workers shaped Latin America's first sets of labor laws, most notably those governing union organization and individual worker job stability. Subsequently, these first laws served as important templates for development, constraining and conditioning the labor codes adopted under mass‐based politics. Using historical data drawn from Chile, Peru, and Argentina, this article shows how differing recruitment practices and variation in the extension of effective suffrage rights and electoral participation shaped early legal labor market segmentation and inequality in Latin America.     

Appendix

Abstract

An unresolved controversy exists in development literature over the nature and function of the informal sector in urban areas of the Third World. The controversy revolves around the presumed relationship between the modern system of industrial production (often termed the “formal sector”) and that part of the urban economy operating outside it (the “informal sector”). The earlier view that the informal sector is a source of employment which can be realized if the linkages between the two sectors are improved through policies designed to regularize the informal sector, has been shown to be non-generalizable and even inaccurate. Increasingly, researchers have come to the conclusion that the modern industrial sector in the Third World is parasitic and detrimental to the development of the remainder of the urban economy. Their research implicitly or explicitly points out that a net transfer of value from the informal sector to the formal sector is occurring. The transfer is in the form of undervalued labor drawn from the informal sector, undervalued goods and services produced in the informal sector which are directly or indirectly consumed in the formal sector, and a transfer of the welfare burden to the informal sector. In the process, that segment of the population in a Third World city that earns a living primarily in the informal sector is moving toward a situation of increasing immiseration.     

Nationalism,Confucianism, work ethic and industrialization in South Korea

The “economic miracle” of South Korea has been well documented by many scholars, but most studies have focused on the cooperative relations between the state and entrepreneurial elites, with little attention being given to the accomplishments and contribution of Korean labor to industrial development. To date there has been no comprehensive sociological study as to how workers in South Korea were “ideologically” mobilized and motivated to commit their labor power to the process of industrialization. In an attempt to redress this imbalance, this article offers an analysis of the role of Confucianism and nationalism in the state-sponsored ideology of work in South Korea during its economic boom of the 1960s and 1970s. It is argued here that both the workers' voluntary participation in industrial work and the harmony in the workplace, which were two of the most essential factors in the nation's remarkable economic success during the 1960s and 1970s, were intimately linked to a new ideology of work and entrepreneurship which combined nationalism and pro-growth Confucian precepts. The article will thus sociologically examine ways in which ideas about work in South Korea have incorporated nationalist ideals and Confucianism, and analyze the relevance of this ideology of work to the nation's phenomenal economic growth.     

Doing Work. Atypische Arbeit in der Film- und der Automobilbranche im Vergleich

Current analyses of labour market transformations focus on two groups: creative and precarious workers. While the first group is typically seen as particularly good at coping with flexibility requirements, the latter appear to lag behind in their ability to compensate for uncertain employment prospects. This paper compares the perceptions and accounts of work experience and employment prospects for low qualified precarious workers and project workers in the film industry. The comparison shows that both groups are far more similar to each other regarding the structural aspects of their jobs and with respect to their interpretations of their work situation than expected. In both cases, the “setting” of the industry and the production process, and a specific view of the qualifications required—under the structural conditions of the labour market segment—are key for interpretations of the work situation. On the basis of these findings, the study suggests that the prevailing foci on labour-market and labour-supply structures could usefully be complemented with the perspective of “doing work” for the analysis of “good” and “bad” work.     

Positioning the product: Indonesian migrant women workers in Taiwan

There are two important phenomena at work relating to migrant labourers, and in particular to “caregivers” or “carers,” in the labour market of contemporary Taiwan. First, the formulation and promotion by brokers of nationality-based stereotypes that tend to channel migrant workers of different nationalities into different segments of the labour market. In terms of gender, women are predominantly channelled into sectors that are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. In the category of care giving, we see a trend toward a hierarchical structuring between Filipinas and Indonesians, with Indonesian women often doing the dirtier and more demanding jobs of caring for the sick and elderly. Second, despite the fact that the majority of Indonesian women workers are contracted to work as carers, a significant number actually work in various capacities in family businesses as well as working as maids in the family home. This reality does not reflect the picture projected by government statistics on migrant workers in Taiwan. Nor indeed is it given sufficient recognition in the research on Filipina domestic workers in Taiwan, which, for the most part, focuses on domestic workers working in that capacity. What appears to be a tightly controlled arena for migrant workers is, in fact, open to manipulation often resulting in a “double-exploitation” of the Indonesian woman worker.     

The Political Construction of Foreign Workers in Japan

Japan organizes its labor markets for foreign workers hierarchically according to “race’ or “nationality.” Zainichi foreigners and nikkeijin are at the high end of the racial hierarchy with better jobs, higher pay, and better working conditions than other foreign workers. At the bottom end are South Asians with casual jobs, poor pay, and dangerous working environments. This racialized hierarchy, which produces differentiated wages and other privileges across different groups of foreign workers, is a political construction of Japanese government officials, who form policies that both establish the legal superiority of certain races over others and constrain the operation of each tier of foreign workers. Japanese employers perpetuate this labor market arrangement by cooperating with government bureaus and yakuza in maintaining labor disciplines tailored to each racial group. These actions create and sustain a racialized economy in Japan that is characterized by inferior jobs, little security, and few benefits for certain sectors of the labor market.     

EXTRACTING LABOR FROM ITS OWNER

The Asian economic crisis in 1997 helped bring down Suharto's authoritarian regime in 1998. At the same time it paved the way for more measures of economic liberalization. Some of these measures have taken the form of labor market liberalization, which aims to increase the labor market's ability to adjust to changing economic conditions by clearing what are seen as burdensome regulations, or “rigidities” as they are known in economic parlance. An important instrument in this effort is the private employment agency, which the Manpower Act no. 13/2003 introduced in 2003. This article argues that the introduction of these agencies has created opportunities for various actors in society to take advantage of the less-protected workers in the uncertain waters of the post-Suharto labor regime. In the process, the nature of industrial relations has also been changed in a way that is more predatory than liberal. Ultimately the agencies help erode the hopes for a better life for workers and undermine the revival of labor political rights in Indonesia.     

Jakarta’s Precarious Workers: Are they a “New Dangerous Class”?

In his 2011 book, The Precariat, Guy Standing claims that the precariat is “a new dangerous class.” This article seeks to revisit this claim and assess it using the case of young workers engaged in urban situations in Jakarta that fit the definition of precarious work. It will particularly focus on young workers who are often identified as potentially “dangerous” because they join vigilante groups. It is argued that these precarious workers share characteristics with the broader working class, and the claim that they constitute a new class in a developing country such as Indonesia is challenged. It is found that membership in vigilante groups is important for providing social bonds that support these young precarious workers in dealing with labour-related insecurities. The social bonds also moderate their anger, anxiety, anomie and alienation, and act to integrate them within society. It is also suggested that where these young precarious workers may be considered “dangerous,” it is a characteristic common to the lumpenproletariat. This shapes their class consciousness and affects their ambiguous relations with the rest of the working class.     

The “Rights Awakening” of Chinese Migrant Workers: Beyond the Generational Perspective

ABSTRACT

?In the spring of 2010, the strike of the Honda workers in Nanhai instigated an on-going discourse on the “rights awakening” of the “new generation of migrant workers.” Since then, much has been written about these young workers, generally described as more pro-active and ready to stand up against their employers than the older and more subservient generation. Drawing from statistical findings from two factory-gate surveys in the metal mechanics and garment sectors in Shenzhen, this paper tests two hypotheses: (a) that workers of the younger generation are more cognizant of their legal rights than older workers; (b) that the younger generation wants to work fewer hours and to enjoy life more. We argue that this popular image of the younger generation of migrant workers is one-dimensional and reductive, as it focuses only on generational differences as an explanatory factor for worker activism, while ignoring other issues such as types of industries and payment systems. In this paper, we purport that these elements play important roles in shaping the attitude of this younger generation toward their work and rights.     

Towards a model of asian plantation systems

This article is about the Shan opium-heroin problem which figures largely in many journalistic and academic accounts of political events in Burma, but which has, paradoxically, been neglected. Rather, it has been “hollywoodized” with images of “opium” armies, heroin “empires,” colorful drug “kings,” and warlord-princes, etc., to the extent that it has more or less become but a dramatic backdrop, an “exotic unknowable.” This article is a more mundane account of the opium-heroin phenomenon. I will deal with it from the economic-political perspective, with particular focus on the basic mechanism of the Shan opium-heroin industry. Specifically, I will deal with the actors involved and their role in what is the only viable and integrated (locally and internationally) industry to emerge from Burma in the over three decades of military rule. My contention, in sum, is that the Shan opium-heroin issue constitutes only a part of the regional and global informal complex of investment, trade, and profit, in which are involved a host of non-Shan actors, whose interests are primarily economic; that basically, it is a transnational/global agro-business, no different, in substance and dynamics, from any other lucrative agro-business; and that Shan peasants, and to some extent, rebel armies, cannot be in any way regarded as “winners” in, or the main beneficiaries of, the “illegal” and “unregulated” informal economy of investment, trade, and profit, that spans borders, regions, and oceans.     

RETHINKING ASIAN MOBILITIES

ABSTRACT

Vietnam's economic reforms have generated much praise for the country's rapid “opening” of its markets, as if the Vietnamese nation had previously existed in a state of isolation, closed to broader global influences and exchanges. Such discourses overlook the importance of transnational circulations of people, goods, technologies, and expertise during the socialist era that were vital to Vietnam's postwar national reconstruction and continue to play a role in post-socialist economic transformation today. This article traces the socialist pathways of labor migration between Vietnam and the former Soviet Bloc (specifically, East Germany) in the 1980s, mobilities that are generally absent in studies of contemporary export labor industries. Based on multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, the author follows Vietnamese workers first to the East German factories where they labored as “contract workers,” and then through their subsequent return and reintegration into Vietnamese society after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These mobilities bespeak of an alternative history and formation of diasporic communities that are little acknowledged or addressed in literature on labor migrations, and yet are important to understanding emerging forms of stratification today in Vietnam. Moreover, an analysis of early non-capitalist experiences with overseas labor regimes in the 1980s provides insights into contemporary Vietnamese governance practices that promote—rather uncritically, similar to other “emerging countries” —export labor as a nation-building strategy to reduce endemic poverty and develop a late socialist country.     

Lithuanian men’s struggles with precarious life: unemployment,working identities,and strategies of survival

Using semi-structured interviews with young unemployed Lithuanian men, this article examines three distinct male working identities associated with ways of coping with unemployment and a sense of precarity: “desperate conformists,” “liberated dreamers,” and men “lost in work transition.” The interviews demonstrate that unemployment stigmatizes men, particularly those with lesser professional and social competencies crucial to efficient participation in the labor market. Therefore, the respondents’ incessant attempts to search for a job or their dreaming about it can be regarded as a way of resisting stigmatization and precarity.     

Paid work and socio-political consciousness of garment workers in Bangladesh

During the era of globalization, while international capital and world market factories are shaping the course of industrialization and “development” in many countries, it remains to be seen how far such “development” is conducive to increasing and improving women's paid work specifically, and labour rights, and empowerment in general. Using my research in Bangladesh, I juxtapose garment workers' experience to assess the implications of world market factories on women workers, their wages, work conditions, skill development, organizational links, and empowerment. In this article, I argue that women's multiple responsibilities and specific social locations as women and paid workers create distinctive form of activism and political consciousness. In addition, I suggest that the intersections of women's lives in the family and the workplace and their networks with other women create what Morgan and Bookman (1988) call “double consciousness” as women and as workers. This double consciousness generates multiple forms of resistance and social movements against the nexus between the state, multinational and local entrepreneurs.     

The New Swiss Employment Puzzle

Switzerland has traditionally had a better employment performance than most other European countries. In the past, this could be explained with a specific foreign workers policy and to the buffer role women played in the labor market. In the late 1990s, however, foreigners and women occupy a considerably more stable position in the labor force than in the 1970s. Therefore, other factors must explain this good employment performance. International comparisons show that advanced economies tend to perform well in employment creation if, a) there are big wage inequalities (USA), or b) if there is a large public sector (Sweden). We show that Switzerland has none of these features, and that on the basis of prevailing theories of post‐industrial employment creation, it is difficult to account for the Swiss labor market performance in the late 1990s. We put forward and assess a number of possible explanations for this “new puzzle”, and conclude that a successful research strategy in this area should combine elements of welfare regime analysis with a focus on labor market institutions.     

唯物史观深化与社会主义市场经济历史定位

唯物史观提供了社会主义历史必然性证明,所擘画的未来蓝图是公有制计划经济。中国改革推出社会主义市场经济,表明生产力第一致动要素已经从"物质生产力"转移至"劳动生产力",进而表明生产力发展重心已经从侧重"生存需要"转移至侧重"发展需要";社会主义市场经济历史定位将经由唯物史观这一转变完成。     

The prostitute

Migrant domestic workers rarely take part in — let alone organize — public protests in the countries where they work. Public protests are virtually unheard of among migrant domestic workers in Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia, and especially in the Middle East and the Gulf States. Over the past decade and a half, however, migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong — mostly Filipinas and Indonesian women — have become highly active, organizing and participating in political protests. Hong Kong's migrant domestic workers protest in a place where they are guest workers and temporary migrants, denied the opportunity of becoming legal citizens or permanent residents. Increasingly, these workers, their grassroots activist organizations, and the nongovernmental organizations with which they are affiliated frame their concerns in terms of global, transnational, and human rights, not merely local migrant worker rights. This article takes the “Consulate Hopping Protest and Hall of Shame Awards” event — part of the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Hong Kong in 2005 — as an ethnographic example of domestic worker protest and as an entrée through which to ask what it is about Hong Kong and about the position of women migrant workers — whose mobility and voice is both a product and a symptom of globalization — that literally permits public protests and shapes their form and content. The article illustrates how migrant workers’ protests and activism have been shaped by domestic worker subjectivities, by the dynamics of inter-ethnic worker affiliations, and by the sociohistorical context of Hong Kong as a post-colonial “global city” and a “neoliberal space of exception.”     

Urban political machines and student politics in “middle” Bangladesh: violent party labor in Rajshahi city

In response to the mostly Dhaka-centered research on student politics in Bangladesh, this article aims to understand political competition, the role of patronage networks, political organizations, violence, and student organizations in the provincial city of Rajshahi. The article explores how student politics in Bangladesh shapes (and is shaped by) the political dynamics in “middle Bangladesh.” Student groups in Bangladesh are closely affiliated to political parties and serve as their most important source for mobilization in a party-political regime commonly referred to as a “partyarchy.” Campus politics is deeply integrated into the urban party-political machine in Rajshahi. Controlling Rajshahi University (RU) provides a steady flow of party workers for the local party machine. Thus, the RU campus is a space for organizing political (and violent) labor as well as an important source of revenue for and the distribution of benefits by local party bosses. The urban party machine, however, is not mechanically held together merely by the dispensation of inducements – instead, it is more chaotic and contingent on a form of strategic ambiguity that disguises the structuring effects of patronage power that keeps members motivated and engaged.     

WHEN WAL-MART WIMPED OUT

Abstract

This article offers one China analyst's perspective on a variety of questions related to the unionization of all sixty-six Wal-Mart outlets in China. Why did China force Wal-Mart to unionize? If, as Marx, paraphrasing Hegel, wrote, “all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice,” is Mao making his comeback? Or if, as Marx immediately continued in his own right, “He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce,” is Hu Jintao playing Louis Bonaparte to Mao's Napoleon? Is the Chinese state acting out of a new level of confidence that it can now challenge the world's most prepossessing corporate giants in order to make good on its communist commitments? Is it running scared in the face of a working class that has at last managed to score a victory? Or is it actually strengthening its power through time-honored tactics of mass organizational control that have not really changed despite the new market context? Are China's workers being protected, empowered, or co-opted and subjected to new forms of state control? And why did one of the world's most militantly antiunion corporations go along? Did they have a choice? Did they fear China's state-run union federation? And finally, what does all this portend for the future of labor relations in China?     

Rome and its Histories: a View from Australia

In this paper I trace the many debates about the past, and its relationship with the present and the future, that have eddied around Rome over the last two centuries. I spend quite a bit of time illustrating the Catholic line on the “eternal city” and on its contestation from, first, Italian nationalist and then more imperialist and Fascist expositions of “sites of memory” there. After “liberation” in 1944, there were new approaches to elucidating the city's meaning, headed by the “myth of Anti‐Fascism” and extending to a left terrorist reading by the Red Brigades. In recent years, “post‐fascism” has grown in importance in Italy's capital, especially as embodied by the mayor since 2008, Gianni Alemanno. These ideological and politically inspired reckonings of history have squared uneasily with the more popular comprehension of the place of the past, all the more given that Rome has been in rapid growth, first from within Italy and nowadays from across the globe. Specific urban groups, notably the city's Jews, have also read history in their own manner. In sum, Rome has not been a venue for a simple, two sided, “culture war”, as cliché assures us is our fate in Australia. Rather, as is also true here, Rome has proved a site of constant and multi‐fronted arguments about the meaning of history, as should be true of any serious democracy.