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1.
《Geoforum》2017
This paper explores the precarious working conditions in the Chinese restaurant industry in Sweden – a country considered to have one of Europe’s most liberal labour immigration policies. Drawing upon a theoretical framework inspired by scholarship on precarious work and time geography, the paper argues that precarious work performed by migrant labour can be usefully understood through three interrelated temporal processes that, when they work together, produce and maintain precarious work-life situations. They are: (1) work-time arrangements: that is, actual working hours per day and over the annual cycle, the pace and intensity of work and the flexibility demanded of migrant workers in terms of when work is carried out, (2) the spatio-temporal ‘waiting zones’ indirectly produced by immigration policies that delay full access to labour markets and in which precarious work-time arrangements consequently arise, and (3) migrant workers’ imagined futures, which motivate them to accept precarious work-time arrangements during a transitory period. The paper thus also illuminates that the Chinese chefs in Sweden’s restaurant industry are not just passive victims of exploitative work-time arrangements. Rather, waiting – for a return to China or settlement in Sweden – may be part of migrants’ strategies to achieve certain life course trajectories. 相似文献
2.
Mass migration to major USA cities is reworking patterns of ethnic jobholding and labor market segmentation. Employers in
a variety of industries have turned to recent migrants, many of whom are not authorized to work in the USA, as a stable labor
supply for low-wage jobs. As a result, many migrant workers enter urban economies through precarious jobs in low-wage industries
and the informal economy where they often endure routine violations of labor and employment laws. This paper examines the
activities of a “migrant worker center” in improving wages and working conditions in migrant labor markets. Through a case
study of a worker center located in a port-of-entry immigrant neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side, we examine the geographies
of the low-wage labor market and the problems that have arisen for workers who hold jobs that effectively exist beyond the
reach of government regulation. We argue that migrant worker centers will likely emerge as a key resource for workers who
are drawn to global cities by the promise of economic opportunity yet confront harsh conditions in the local labor markets
in which they are employed. 相似文献
3.
The provision of care is an increasingly pressing issue in the Global North. With an ageing population and policies encouraging women into the labour market, there is a growing need for workers to undertake paid caring. This poses important and urgent questions about the social organisation of labour markets. Care work typically is low paid and undertaken in precarious, informal, or temporary situations. Many posts are filled by economic migrants, raising concerns about a care deficit in sending countries. In this paper we examine the ‘caring work’ undertaken by migrant workers in a West London Hospital. We employ a twofold characterisation of caring work. Like other bottom-end service sector work, this work is characterised by the face-to-face ‘emotional labour’. However, it also requires ‘body work’: close and often intimate physical contact between carers and those they care for. We argue that both of these aspects are important in understanding how caring work is constructed as poorly regarded and low paid. We show how these features play out in particular ways for migrant workers employed in such caring work. 相似文献
4.
5.
《Geoforum》2016
Labour geography foregrounds the role of workers in shaping geographies of work by paying attention to the larger actions of labour in response to the capital and state. It however pays less attention to the everyday geographies of labour and the complexities of the ‘social being’ in trying to understand workers motivations and responses. This review argues for labour geography to look beyond the factory gates to understand the nuanced politics of labour as relations get ‘reworked’ within a patriarchal-capitalist society. It argues for paying close attention to the life stories and experiences of workers, to create linkages between lives as waged workers in a formal workspace with the informal nature of work-life outside, without losing sight of the larger struggles of labour and global processes, to develop a more grounded understanding of worker’s agency and actions. 相似文献
6.
Michelle Buckley 《Geoforum》2012,43(2):250-259
As a crisis that was precipitated in part by risky forms of investment in the built environment, construction workers, and particularly migrants employed in the industry have been at the forefront of job-losses worldwide since 2008. I offer a reading of construction unemployment through David Harvey’s theorisation of the secondary circuit of capital, arguing that these trends reflect the industry’s immanent connections to the built environment and to volatile, debt-fuelled urbanisation strategies which have played a crucial role in absorbing global capital surpluses in recent years. I ground this international perspective through a case study on the crisis experiences of a group of migrant construction workers from the south Indian state of Kerala who lost their jobs in Dubai in 2009. Based on interviews with migrants who returned home following the collapse of the emirate’s construction sector, I explore how a number of place-specific relationships that transect the Kerala–Dubai construction labour market served to compound these workers’ economic insecurity following the crisis. These include the immense migration debts that migrants shouldered, the insecure and exploitative character of employment in Dubai’s building trades, and the particular vulnerability of Dubai’s construction markets to the retreat of finance capital from the Gulf region in 2008. Workers’ accounts offer insights into the uneven and trans-local geometries of risk that define contemporary construction work in Dubai. More broadly, they provide a key perspective on the precarious producer geographies that underpin the secondary circuit of capital. 相似文献
7.
《Geoforum》2016
For more than a decade, labor geography has stressed the importance of ‘giving primacy’ to workers in the analysis of global economic restructuring. However, the majority of contributions have focused on organized workers, leaving the issue of individual labor agency much in the dark. The aim of this article is to shed light on the agency of individual workers involved in rapid industrialization processes. In this endeavor we draw inspiration from recent contributions that have integrated Cindi Katz’s threefold categorization of agency as reworking, resilience and resistance. In combination with this categorization, we apply a distinction between workers’ intentions to enter the industrial labor market and the consequences of doing so (i.e. the outcomes of their engagement). The discrepancy between intentions and outcomes is indicative of labor agency and points to the structural constraints that condition the labor market. The empirical part of the article draws on interviews with local and migrant first-generation workers in two settlements located next to an industrial zone in Can Tho Province in the Mekong River Delta Region of Vietnam. It is suggested that the alternating practices of reworking and resilience can be conceptualized as transformative trajectories - workers’ situated knowledge and practices evolve and change over time and is conditioned by the specific labor market contexts through which the individual moves. 相似文献
8.
《Geoforum》2016
The governance of labour in global production networks (GPNs) has become a critical area of concern amongst academics and policymakers alike. To date, GPN research has focused on the role of private company codes and multi-stakeholder ethical initiatives primarily driven by lead-firms. Other GPN studies highlight the critical role of civil society organisations (CSOs) in challenging lead-firm purchasing practices and shaping regulatory outcomes at local production sites. However, GPN research has not sufficiently incorporated the role of nation states in regulating work through legislative frameworks and enforcement regimes, often referred to in the literature as ‘state’ or ‘public’ governance. This is despite a ‘regulatory renaissance’ taking place across certain developing countries, seeking to strengthen their national regulatory labour institutions (Piore and Schrank, 2008:1).The GPN framework provides an analytical lens through which to conceptualise cross-cutting strands of trans-scalar governance regimes, involving complex networks of state, private and civil society actors operating at multiple scales. Notions of territorial and societal embeddedness are used to elucidate how global ethical standards derived from particular country contexts become enmeshed in national regulatory frameworks and local societal relations, shaping governance outcomes for precarious workers incorporated into GPNs. The paper draws attention to the ‘trans-scalar embeddedness’ of labour governance regimes which interact across geographical scales and, in the case of South African fruit, reflect a ‘trans-scalar governance deficit’ for precarious workers. It is argued that the influence of national regulatory regimes should be more fully incorporated into analytical frameworks for understanding governance outcomes in GPNs. 相似文献
9.
《Geoforum》2017
Canada is in a liminal space, with renewed struggles for and commitments to indigenous land and food sovereignty on one hand, and growing capital interest in land governance and agriculture on the other. While neoliberal capital increasingly accumulates land-based control, settler-farming communities still manage much of Canada’s arable land. This research draws on studies of settler colonialism, racial hierarchy and othering to connect the ideological with the material forces of settler colonialism and show how material dominance is maintained through colonial logics and racially ordered narratives. Through in-depth interviews, I investigate how white settler farmers perceive and construct two distinctly ‘othered’ groups: Indigenous peoples and migrant farmers and farm workers. Further, I show the disparate role of land and labour in constructing each group, and specifically, the cultural and material benefits of these constructions for land-based settler populations. At the same time, settler colonial structures and logics remain reciprocally coupled to political conditions. For instance, contemporary neoliberalism in Canadian agriculture modifies settler colonial structures to be sure. I argue, however, that political economic analyses of land and food production in Canada (such as corporate concentration, land grabbing and farm consolidation) ought to better integrate the systemic forces of settler colonialism that have conditioned land access in the first place. Of course, determining who is able to access land—and thus, who is able to grow food—continues to be a territorial struggle. Thus, in order to shift these conditions we ought to examine how those with access and control have acquired and maintained it. 相似文献
10.
《Geoforum》2016
Labour geography aims to explore aspects of workers’ agency that have not yet been at the centre of research, this includes: the links between working-class politics and local communities, the interdependence of global economic networks and working-class activities, and the spatial dimension of workers’ organisations. Although these aspects are relevant for the dynamics of mass strikes, an analysis of mass strikes has been largely absent from debates in labour geography. Rosa Luxemburg’s seminal analysis of strikes in Russia demonstrated the rapid spatial expansion of these movements without any central organisation. Similar phenomena have occurred in recent mass strikes in the emerging economies. This text shows how mass strikes in Brazil, India and South Africa can be investigated through a labour geography lens and calls for a renewed debate on how a ‘strike wave’ is defined or understood. 相似文献
11.
《Geoforum》2017
Geographers and oral historians continue to have much to learn from each other. The subfield of labour geography in particular can enrich its understanding of workers’ lived experiences, both in employment and beyond the workplace, through greater use of interpretative, collaborative oral history methodologies. Attentive to the temporal specificity and inter-subjectivity of people’s narratives, oral history reveals how workers’ moral geographies emerge and change. This article documents the spatio-temporalities and institutions of food sector employment in Peterborough, England, a city-region from which urban-based workers are bussed out daily to rural jobs. The analysis draws on four extended case studies of people who migrated to the UK and worked in the sector in the 2000s, building on recent research that has highlighted harsh employment conditions in the food production, packing and processing sector. It complements this work by viewing narrative itself as an agentic act and listening to how research participants crafted their life stories. These stories revealed diverse, complex and context-specific moral geographies, with participants variously placing value on small acts of rebellion or refusal, dignity and the time to speak with others at work. The article advocates greater engagement by labour geographers with the subjective experiences of workers, and with individual as well as collective agency. 相似文献
12.
《Geoforum》2015
The World Conservation Union (IUCN) publishes the Red List of Threatened Species, the most authoritative information available globally on the conservation status of species. However, the status of globally threatened species remains controversial at local levels because many of them are not protected as part of national statutory law. Such anomalies are examples of controversies in implementing the much-hyped environmental slogan “think globally, act locally”. Here we provide a comparative review between globally threatened species as listed by the IUCN Red List found in Nepal and those of nationally protected species under Nepalese law. We discovered a significantly higher diversity of globally threatened mammals and birds in Nepal than would be expected relative to their global ratios. We established remarkable disparities in species conservation in Nepal: (1) a large number (an average of 85% of species of five taxonomic groups: mammals, birds, amphibians, fishes and reptiles) of IUCN-listed globally threatened species found in Nepal are not protected by national law; (2) most protected species listed are mammals (70%), but more than half of globally-threatened mammals found in Nepal are not protected; and (3) amphibians and fish are not protected, although they represent 12% of the total number of globally-threatened species found in the country. Such large gaps in Nepalese conservation law are an indication of unresponsive and inefficient conservation planning. The Government of Nepal and international conservation partners should: (1) emphasize knowledge-based conservation strategies for all taxonomic groups; and (2) prioritize updating the lists of protected species. 相似文献
13.
《Geoforum》2016
In this paper I offer a critical analysis of ‘sharing’ as a discursive formation in the emerging on-demand economy or, as its more commonly known, ‘sharing’ economy. The set of firms and digital platforms that constitute the on-demand economy evade precise definition, though in popular commentary include Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Taskrabbit, Couchsurfing, and Yelp, among others. I argue that sharing is a discursive formation that is produced through neoliberal economic practices and contributes to their constitution and performance, connoting the embeddedness and inter-determination of the economic with the social. I analyze interview material with software developers and others working for on-demand economy firms in San Francisco to underscore how the sharing discourse is produced, and to examine the possible relationship between the sharing discourse and working practices in the on-demand economy. I explore how sharing, though a fragile and contested discourse, has been used by some proponents of the on-demand economy in an attempt to justify and normalize flexible and precarious work through an ambiguous association between capitalist exchange and altruistic social values. This ambiguity is productive insofar as sharing has become associated variously with transactional platforms, digital peer review via surveillant and punitive ratings systems, and algorithmically mediated, precarious, and ‘entrepreneurial’ contract work, while retaining affective associations with community, inclusion, and participation. 相似文献
14.
Recent studies indicate that many migrants are engaged mainly in the informal sector in low-paid, short-term, and insecure occupations in cities. Using a qualitative research approach, this paper examines the gendered experiences, livelihood strategies and wellbeing of migrants engaged in domestic work in Accra, Ghana. Employing structure-agency theoretical perspectives, the paper also discusses how migrant domestic workers employ their own agency to counter exploitation. The findings show clear gendered patterns of employment in domestic work, with men having stronger agency to negotiate better conditions of work and remuneration. The paper argues that despite the heterogeneity and diversity of the work conditions and experiences of domestic workers in Accra, the importance of gender as a crucial factor mediating the experiences of both male and female domestic workers and their impacts on their wellbeing must be recognised in policies to address and regulate domestic work in Ghana. 相似文献
15.
Michelle Christian 《GeoJournal》2017,82(4):805-821
This paper examines the application of private governance through certification labels and industry initiatives in the tourism industry. These efforts are sold as a way to achieve decent working conditions for tourism workers who participate in global value chains in the global South. The question at hand is, are these mechanisms an effective way to support tourism labor? Specifically, this research documents two main findings. First, I evaluate the programs through a tourism global value chain approach and demonstrate how tour operators use language about sustainability and the certification of accommodation suppliers for brand product differentiation and marketing. My findings demonstrate that these programs do not support tourism workers. Second, even with certification and recommendations, the standards are limited and do not include measures to protect against precarious employment, gendered divisions of labor, and emotional labor demands. Thus, these initiatives do not fully protect tourism workers. Finally, I argue a new governance research approach focused on workers’ rights and empowerment provides insights into achieving a more equitable international tourism landscape. This has implications for a governance analysis focused on rights and ‘synergistic’ governance strategies. 相似文献
16.
《Geoforum》2015
Foreign employment has become a global phenomenon. With the increasing commercialisation and formalisation of transnational labour migration, recruitment agencies and agents have gained importance. The paper aims to contribute to a more differentiated understanding of the role and the practices of the main actors in the middle space of migration, the brokers in the recruitment process for transnational migration. Based on empirical material from Nepal, it argues that the detected negative reputation of labour brokers is only partially justified. Besides common bad practices and fraud cases, recruiters perform important roles for the facilitation of transnational mobility and present the necessary infrastructure for labour migration. They connect people and places, establish networks and can play an important role in making migration safer. Brokers are important facilitators in supporting alternative income strategies and new livelihood options of people. At the same time they are entrepreneurs in a competitive and risky economic field, confronted with multifaceted constraints. As long as the gap between the dreams of potential migrants and the reality of marginality in Nepal remains wide, labour brokers might persist as important middlemen for global work. Thus, migration brokerage is likely to remain big business. 相似文献
17.
Tara Polzer Ngwato 《Geoforum》2012,43(3):561-572
This article explores spatialised identity construction as part of the process of refugee and migrant integration. It uses an empirical case study – of villages in a rural border area of South Africa – to argue that identity groups can be constructed in relation to micro-spaces within a single village, refer to identity characteristics which are largely independent of cross-border mobility or territorial origin, and be negotiated through micro-mobilities within different segments of a ‘local’ space. This stands in contrast to debates opposing sedentary ‘roots’ or transnational or transient ‘routes’ as identity forming spaces. Establishing the relevant spatial aspects of identity construction is an empirical matter, rather than an ideological one. 相似文献
18.
打破传统的自下而上安装钻塔的方法(顺装法),采用自上而下的安装法(逆装法)构想,成功地研制出一种新型钻塔拆装机和一种机装可逆式钻塔,既保持了四脚钻塔的优点,又解决了高空拆装作业带来的不安全隐患,减轻了劳动强度,提高了生产效率,取得了良好效果 相似文献
19.
In our editorial introduction to this themed issue on labour geography, we outline some important on-going debates in the relatively young field of labour geography and suggest future directions for research. First, there is the key question of labour as an active agent in the production of economic landscapes. The agency of labour will likely remain a defining feature of labour geography, but perhaps it is not as important to construct theoretical analytical boundaries as it is to define labour geography as a political project. Second, debates continue surrounding the production of scale and the multiscalarity of organized labour. Third, labour geographers have yet to engage in any sustained fashion with unpacking the complex identities of workers and the way in which those identities simultaneously are shaped by and shape the economic and cultural landscape. Fourth, there is some debate on the costs and benefits of a ‘normative’ labour geography which emphasizes what workers and their organizations ‘could’ or even ‘should’ do. Lastly, we challenge the assumption that labour geographers have not yet asserted themselves as activists in their own right. We conclude the editorial by introducing the articles included in the issue. While these articles may not address every gap in the literature, they do contribute in significant ways to move the labour geography project forward. 相似文献
20.
《Geoforum》2016
Geography has recently experienced something of an ‘ethical turn’, and much attention has been focused on consumption as a site of ethical practice. Studies of ethical consumption tend to focus on explicitly socially or environmentally responsible purchasing decisions, but a growing body of research on ‘ordinary ethics’, starting from the premise that most consumption has a moral dimension, has opened up the notion of what counts as ethical to include everyday habits, considerations and desires. There remains, however, relatively little appreciation of the ethical agency of consumers within the global South, and little consideration of how enactments of ordinary ethics within Southern contexts may deepen understandings of the practices and meanings of diverse forms of consumption. Addressing this gap, this paper explores accounts of producers and consumers of craft in informal trading spaces in Cape Town, a city that 20 years after apartheid’s end remains deeply racially segregated and has seen numerous incidents of xenophobic violence. It is in this context that I unpack the ethical dimensions of a seemingly trivial form of consumption, arguing that sites of informal trade may provide spaces for the expression and enactment of care for the other. While not always entirely positive, these interactions reveal a complex moral landscape where shared identities and mutual recognition underpin mundane economic transactions. The paper concludes that ordinary ethics of care for the other go beyond explicit, rational responsibility, and that informal spaces of trade should be considered as key sites for the exploration of consumer ethics. 相似文献