This book utilizes the School to Work Transition Survey (SWTS) of the ILO to discuss what shapes an individual worker’s decision to participate in unionization and how her working condition is affected by that.. There remains a disconnect as far as our understanding of the relationship between the labour’s choice to unionize as individual actor and the broader socioeconomic, political and cultural context of that choice, is concerned.
Using the SWTS data, the book focuses on the identification of the correlates of workers’ propensity to unionize, the outcomes of unionizing and their synthesis with the wider political economy context to arrive at stylized patterns in the way informal workers exercise their agency.
The book also reflects upon field data on organizing challenges of migrant workers in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. The book does not claim to establish any causality but is interested in bringing out broad patterns that define informal workers’ organizing in a particular context. In the process, the book ends up with the preposition that despite all the heterogeneities across regions, informal workers’ organizing today can be understood through the lens of pragmatism.
Author(s): Neetu Choudhary
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 206
City: Singapore
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
Fluid Definitions of the Informal
Informal Workers’ Agency: Current Narrative
Multiple Alternatives for Informal Workers’ Agency Today
…… the Basis for Further Inquiry
Methodological Procedure
The School to Work Transition Survey (SWTS) Data and Its Analysis
Primary Research for India
2 Informal Workers and Organized Agency: Trends from Asia, Africa and Latin America
Asia
Africa
Latin America
Convergences and Divergences
3 Organizing Amidst Informality in Nepal: Between Confrontation and Cooperation
Informality Among Young Workers in Nepal: Evidence from SWTS
Informal Workers and Organized Agency in Nepal
Organizing Among Young Informal Workers in Nepal: Evidence from Micro-Data
4 Informal Workers and Organized Agency in Bangladesh: The Defining Role of RMG Sector
Informality Among Young Workers: What the SWTS Has to Say?
Informal Workers’ Organizing in Bangladesh
Correlates of Young Informal Workers’ Organizing in Bangladesh and Gains therefrom
5 Informality and Organizing in Uganda: A Case for Cooperatives and Trade Union Partnership
Informality Among Young Workers in Nepal: Evidence from SWTS
Informality and Organizing in Uganda
Correlates of Organizing Among Young Informal Workers and Gains therefrom
6 Organizing Lessons from Tanzania: The Formal-Informal Rift
Informality Among Young Workers: Evidence from SWTS
Organizing Among Informal Workers in Tanzania
Organizing Among Young Informal Workers: Micro Determinants and Gains therefrom
7 Informal Workers’ Organizing in Brazil: A Basis for Social and Solidarity Economy
Informality and the Youth: Evidence from SWTS
Organizing Among Informal Workers
Organizing - Correlates and Gains Among Young Informal Workers: Evidence from Microdata
8 Informal Workers’ Organizing in Peru: Potential Role for Indigenous Movements
Incidence of Informality Among Young Workers in Urban Peru: Results from SWTS
Organized Agency Among Informal Workers of Peru
Micro Determinants of Organizing Among Young Informal Workers in Urban Peru and Gains therefrom
9 Informality, Migrants and the Rarity of Organizing: Insights from India During COVID-19
Fleeing Their Destinations: Bihari Migrant Workers During COVID Lockdown
What Have the Trade Unions Been Doing?
Migrants—The Invisible Informal
Social Protection Versus Employment Relation
… Coming Back to the Migrants’ Question—Has COVID-19 Changed Anything?
Non-government Organizations, Informality and Migrants
The Relief During COVID-19
From Temporary Relief to Long-Term Institutionalization
Aligning with the New Organizing
10 Pragmatism as the Theory of Informal Workers’ Organizing? A Concluding Note
What Influences and What Is Influenced by Informal Workers’ Participation in Unionism?
What Has Enabled Greater Organizing Among Informal Workers?
Pragmatism: Towards a Theory of Informal Workers’ Agency?
Bibliography
Index
