Keeping labour mobility informal: the lack of legality of Central Asian migrants in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan's legal–regulatory framework provides for a small number of quotas for highly skilled foreign workers but has no provisions for legal employment of semi-skilled or low-skilled migrants from the Central Asian states, who enter under the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) visa-free regime and work informally in construction, household and service sectors. The lack of acknowledgement of the scale of informal labour migration has denoted an act of strategic neglect on the part of the state, allowing it to render migrant labour illegal, disposable, and keep migrants legally and statistically invisible. Unable to obtain a legal status, migrants nominally comply with the existing legal framework as they also circumvent and subvert it. The article details the entrenched informal regime of labour migration and explains why recent efforts to ‘legalize’ labour through the introduction of a labour patent (licence), as is the case in Russia, are unlikely to bring in significant reforms.     

Struggles for autonomy from and within the market of southeast Mexico's small coffee producers

This contribution examines the historically shifting reproduction strategies of southeast Mexico's small coffee producers through the lens of autonomy. It argues that producers attempt to create and occupy spaces of relative autonomy from commodity and labour markets while also struggling to exert a degree of control over their commodity market integration – termed here ‘autonomy within the market’. Recent developments in Mexico's coffee sector – falling real prices for certified coffee, an emerging quality programme led by transnational export firms, and devastating crop disease – are transforming coffee growing regions, threatening producer livelihoods and driving diverse reconfigurations of autonomous struggles.     

Landless but not assetless: female agricultural labour on the road to better status,evidence from India

Women's share of agricultural wage employment is rising across the Indian sub-continent. Studies examining this process of feminisation tend to be divided along the lines of an ideological debate following either the ‘poverty-push’ or the ‘demand-pull’ argument. This debate, however, has largely ignored the institution of patriarchy. In this study we revisit the debate with a focus on gender relations. The study is based on data collected from 291 households in the state of Andhra Pradesh. We find that, despite increased labour market participation, women's household status, her wages and working conditions remain acutely depressed. Women labourers with access to productive assets, however, are effectively expanding their agency within both the household and the labour market. Their experiences, we argue, have implications for transformative policies.     

Oligarchic rule and best practice migration management: the political economy origins of labour migration regime of the Philippines

The Philippine labour migration regime has been praised as one of the best examples of government-led migration management in the developing world, with some of the most extensive policies and bureaucratic organisations to manage and protect its citizens working abroad. However, not much knowledge has been accumulated that explains its origins or why it emerged in the Philippines and not in other large-scale migrant-sending countries. Contrary to current explanations that emphasise the economic benefits of labour migration and civil society mobilisation, this paper highlights the migration regime's compatibility with the political economy interests of the country's ruling elites. Bringing together the country's two important political and economic features, oligarchic rule and labour export, this paper suggests that the unique genesis of the Philippines’ migration regime casts doubts on the replicability of the Philippine model in other labour-sending countries as currently pursued by the international development community.     

Political parties,globalization and labour strength: Assessing differences across welfare state programs

This article investigates how globalization and organized labour condition partisan effects on different welfare state programs. The main argument is that the conditional effect of globalization on government partisanship depends on how relevant a program is to the needs of vulnerable groups and that organized labour additionally affects this relationship. Analyzing 21 OECD countries between 1980 and 2011/2014, empirical evidence largely corroborates this argument: Firstly, the expectation that partisan differences decrease with globalization in general and especially in weak labour countries in the case of programs that are less relevant for compensation holds true for old-age provision and partly for sick pay insurance. Secondly, and in accordance with theoretical expectations concerning programs that are primarily relevant for compensation, partisan differences increase with globalization, in general regarding education and only in strong labour countries regarding unemployment benefits. Therefore, while globalization constrains national politics’ room for manoeuvre in some areas, parties are still able to follow their ideologically preferred policies and respond to compensation demands in others.     

Re‐imagining Geographic Labour Mobility through ‘Distance Labour’

Geographic labour mobility is necessary for increasing productivity in Australia. Long‐distance commuting has been found to be especially significant. However, important considerations are being excluded from policy discussions within the Productivity Commission on this topic. This commentary covers these important omissions. They are, namely, the problematic conflation of the terminologies of ‘fly‐in, fly‐out’ and ‘long‐distance commuting’ with mining, and a lack of qualitative research investigating the material impacts of these labour practices on people's lives. This commentary puts forward a new terminology, ‘distance labour’, to better include those industries on the margins of distance commuting. By accounting for the social worlds of workers engaged in distance labour, the Productivity Commission could increase the validity of its datasets, and provide more egalitarian policy recommendations.     

Hegel,Haiti and revolution: the post-colonial moment

Abstract

Susan Buck-Morss’s argument that the Haitian Revolution embodied the most universal aspect of the French Revolution, namely the quest for universal freedom, relies on the supposed references to Haiti in the master–slave dialogue in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. The revolution’s lodgement at the core of this foundational text of Enlightenment universalism is, for her, about as convincing a demonstration as one can have of the universal significance of the Haitian Revolution. Marxists have opposed her venture, and demonstrated their hostility to post-colonial thinking, principally by claiming that the master–slave is an expression of European class conflict. This paper agrees with Buck-Morss that the Haitian Revolution critically affirmed the principle of universal freedom and, indeed, pushed the revolution in France and Europe in a radical direction. A better affirmation of the universal significance of the Haitian Revolution than the thoughts of Hegel is possible. The latter do not actually provide such affirmation, because racism, Eurocentrism and a hostility to political radicalism are fundamental aspects of Hegel’s thought. The alternative affirmation can be found in Marxist analysis. This paper outlines such an analysis, and concludes that post-colonialism of Buck-Morss’s sort is no substitute for the perspective provided by historical materialism.     

Labour market regulation and subjective well-being in low-income countries

A growing literature suggests social democratic policies, as exemplified by the welfare state and active labour market policies, promote higher levels of life satisfaction compared to the neoliberal agenda of austerity, smaller government and more ‘flexible’ labour markets. In this article, this inquiry is extended to low-income countries. A theoretical argument is developed for why labour market regulation (LMR) (rather than social welfare spending or the general size of government) is a more appropriate locus of attention outside of the industrial democracies. The relationship between LMR and several measures of well-being is then empirically evaluated, finding robust evidence that people live more satisfying lives in countries that more stringently regulate their labour market. Moreover, it is found that positive benefits of LMR on well-being are the largest among individuals with lower incomes. The implications for public policy and the study of human well-being are discussed.     

‘We Looked after People Better when We Were Informal’: The ‘Quasi-Formalisation’ of Montevideo's Waste-Pickers

Drawing on participatory research, this article explores the state formalisation of Uruguayan clasificadores (waste-pickers). It goes beyond the informal/formal binary, instead proposing the concepts of ‘para-formality’ to describe economic activity that exists in parallel to regulated and taxed spheres, and ‘quasi-formality’ to describe processes of formalisation that are supported by underlying informal practices. When unregulated, clasificadores enjoyed parallel services in health, finance and social security, implying that benefits of ‘formalisation’ must be explored ethnographically rather than assumed. The persistence of ‘quasi-formal’ activity within formalised recycling plants complicates simple narratives of informal to formal transitions and suggests that the concept can be useful for the study of labour policies in Latin America and beyond.     

Fighting the Hellhounds: Pro-democracy Activists and Party Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia

In the literature on post-Suharto Indonesia, an increasingly dominant stream has portrayed the political system as being hijacked by predatory elite interests associated with the fallen New Order regime. While such characterisations describe important elements of the post-1998 polity, they do not tell the full story. At the same time that patronage-driven career politicians have staked their claims in the newly democratic state, a large number of civil society activists also started to play an active role in formal politics. This article illustrates how human rights advocates, women activists and labour leaders have tried to promote their causes not from the margins of civil society, but from within the power centre of political institutions. To be sure, some activists-turned-politicians have failed in this effort, but others have initiated key pieces of legislation that led to ground-breaking reforms. In comparative terms, the article demonstrates that Indonesian activists have created an effective political niche for themselves, avoiding both the patterns of state co-optation so prevalent in South Korea and the anti-system attitudes of activist politicians in Malaysia.