Full Description
Social Contracts and Informal Workers in the Global South draws on the accounts of informal workers, who represent over 60 per cent of the global workforce, to advocate for radically new conceptualizations of state-society, capital-labour and state-capital-labour relations, illustrating how current social contracts may be considered inadequate, irrelevant or unjust.
Bridging social contract theories, both mainstream and critical, and the experiences of informal workers - self-employed, wage employed and sub-contracted - this book sheds light on how many existing social contract models stigmatize informal workers and do not offer legal or social protection. Instead of ideologically driven 'top-down' calls to revitalize the social contract, it advocates for 'bottom-up' initiatives focused on the demands of the working poor in the informal economy.
With a wealth of cross-national evidence, as well as promising case studies, this timely and thought-provoking book will prove vital for scholars and researchers of informal workers and of state-capital-labour relations; and for policy makers negotiating new social contracts.
Contents
Contents:
Introduction: social contracts and informal workers in the global South 1
Sophie Plagerson, Laura Alfers and Martha Chen
1 Recognition, responsiveness and reciprocity: what
informal worker leaders expect from the state, the private
sector and themselves 31
Sally Roever and Ana Carolina Ogando
2 Self-employment and social contracts: from the perspective
of the informal self-employed 49
Martha Chen
3 "Dependent Contractor": towards the recognitions of a new
labor category 73
Françoise Carré
4 Taxation and the informal sector in the global South:
strengthening the social contract without reciprocity? 85
Michael Rogan
5 Towards a more inclusive social protection: informal
workers and the struggle for a new social contract 106
Laura Alfers and Rachel Moussié
6 Extended Producer Responsibility: opportunities and
challenges for waste pickers 126
Taylor Cass Talbott
7 Human rights and transnational social contracts: the
recognition and inclusion of homeworkers? 144
Marlese von Broembsen
8 Informal workers harnessing the power of digital platforms
in India 169
Salonie Muralidhara Hiriyur
9 "Essential and disposable? Or just disposable?" Informal
workers during COVID-19 189
Sarah Orleans Reed
Conclusion: Post-pandemic epilogue - the bad old contract, an
even worse contract or a better social contract for informal workers? 216
Laura Alfers, Martha Chen and Sophie Plagerson
Index
