We are very grateful to all the presenters in these sessions, several of whom - for various reasons - we could not include in this collection. We are also very grateful to our interlocutors at the conference, Wendy Larner from the University of Bristol and Roger Lee from Queen Mary, University of London. We are very grateful to Blackwell for allowing us to include a revised version of this publication in the collection.
Social justice and neoliberalism
Social Justice and Neoliberalism seeks to root neoliberalism in local struggles over the everyday existence and social reproduction of the lives of peoples and communities caught up in the ever-expanding reach of marketization. Conceptualizations of social justice have also played a key role in debates about the relative merits of civil society and the state in the face of market violence and neoliberalization. Fyfe (2005) makes similar points in relation to wider policies towards the so-called 'third sector' in Britain.
Voices from the trueque
Due to state budget cuts, the state could no longer be expected to provide solutions, which would have to be achieved through civil society. We see an interesting mix of the language of challenge and resistance (solidarity, ecology, valuing people, not money) and perhaps the influence of neoliberalism (trade, entrepreneurship, markets, personal responsibility). This is one of the reasons why barter spread so quickly across Argentina in 2001 and 2002.
Confounding neoliberalism
The first illustration of economic activism occurred in a rural pueblo in the highlands of Canas, Cusco. Cooperatives were often inefficient and corrupt, and in the Surandina region the pressure to sell to former landowners was high. The changing emphases of the actors in Surandina reflect the changing political-economic context and the changed Church.
Travelling neoliberalism: Polish and Ghanaian migrant workers in London
In the final parts of the chapter we examine the impact of neoliberal restructuring on the London economy itself, mapping the creation of a demand for these workers and of a new 'migrant division of labour' in London, and contrasting the very different experiences of Polish and Ghanaian migrants working in London's low-wage economy. Contrasting the experiences of Polish and Ghanaian workers in London's low-wage economy thus provides important insight into the complexities of labor migration and into the relationships between international labor migration and neoliberalism. In the mid-1990s, Poland was considered one of the most successful transition economies in East-Central Europe – a “soaring eagle” in the words of Inter-European Economics.
For those who can find work, job security is a thing of the past, and real wages have fallen significantly (see also smith et al. in this volume), while working conditions in the new private enterprises are often more reminiscent of the nineteenth than the nineteenth. the beginning of the twenty-first century (kowalik 2001). Across the more general inequality of London's labor market and clearly racialized patterns of employment and unemployment, a marked 'immigrant division of labor' also existed in London at the turn of the new millennium. In 2002/3, 46 per cent of the city's entry-level jobs (housekeepers, cleaners, caretakers, asylum collectors and labourers) were filled by foreign-born workers - the largest single group to have come to London from the world.
Loneliness is indeed a recurring theme in the narratives of many of the Polish workers we spoke to. Itinerant Neoliberalism 83 relations between these contradictory processes and the equally complex practices of migration. Most obviously, with the exception of the hotel and catering sector, our research on London's low-wage economy shows that employers tend to respect the national minimum wage, even if they rarely pay the higher London Living Wage (May et al. 2007). .
McIlwaine (2007) 'keeping London going: Global cities, the British state and London's new migrant division of labour', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Coping Practices among colombian Migrants in London, Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London.
Neoliberalization and its discontents
The aim was to critique processes of neoliberalisation in Manchester, drawing on the social justice concept of the living wage and 'the micro-contexts of everyday routines' (Barnett 2005: 9) of the working poor in Manchester. It begins with a brief overview of changes in the labor market and the emergence of the concept of a living wage as a means to combat these changes in the labor market and their effects on workers. It then introduces the two phases of the research and discusses the findings before concluding with a brief assessment of the future of social justice – in the form of a living wage – in Britain.
The Living Wage aims to make work at the bottom of the labor market really pay, putting increasing pressure, through local progressive activism, on local wages and working conditions. As such, Manchester is similar in terms of historical and contemporary political economic context to many of the living wage cities in the US. The role of respect in the literature as an effect of low income is often downplayed in favor of effects on living standards or spending power (see Sennett 2003).
The lack of housing affordability has had serious consequences for the level of social equality in the city, as more and more of the city's population is excluded from home ownership. As such, these processes were part of the reason for increasing social inequalities and increased levels of working-class poverty in Manchester. Lawton (2008) Working of Poverty: A Study of the Low-Paid and the "Working Poor", London: IPPR.
Manchester Partnership (2007) Manchester State of the City Report Manchester: Manchester Partnership. 2002) Dialectical Urbanism: Social Struggle in the Capitalist City, New York: Monthly Review Press.
Bargaining with the devil: neoliberalization, informal work and workers’ resistance
The chapter begins by placing the informal sector in the context of neoliberal policies and the flexibility of the labor market. The role of the informal sector in the economy has changed profoundly as a result of neoliberal economic policies through which labor has become flexible via subcontracting chains. Negotiations with the Devil 117 However, these perspectives do not explain the reality of the informal sector today.
In Bangladesh, 70 percent of the urban workforce was informal (Charmes 2000) and 80 percent of new jobs were in the informal sector in the early 1990s in Guatemala City (Radcliffe 1999). The growing visibility of the informal sector has been highlighted not only in LDCs but also in the most developed countries (MDCs) (Boris and Prügl 1996; Gordon and Sassen 1992). The development of the informal sector is no longer simply perceived as a survival strategy of the urban poor.
In fact, the industry is one of the oldest forms of industrial production in the country. I'm just a worker in the workshop.' The labor inspectors left and never came back. A decrease in the size of workplaces, the clandestine nature of work in residential areas, and the low labor cost policies of the garment industry present difficulties for unions to organize in the informal sector.
Acts of resistance in the workshops are suppressed by the insecurity of the job and the constant threat of job losses.
Transitions to work and the making of neoliberal selves: growing up in
An important issue is not to underestimate the active participation of young people in the creation of their lives, their creative engagements with current circumstances (James et al. 1998; Jenks 1996) and the benefits they derive from the variety of lifestyles that societies current market conditions potentially provide them (Miles 2000). Remembering this is particularly important in the post-socialist context of East Germany in which this research is set. It was at the DIY store, and I really wanted to apply there again, but they don't accept anyone.
Interviewer: Would you go west or would you prefer to stay east. Hannah: If I have a good job in the West that I'm happy with, and if the people are OK, then I don't have a problem with that. That's like if I had a stupid job in the East, where I don't like people, I don't know, then I'd go West too.
Tina: And if I got a better offer in the west, of course I would go. As a result, many young people are in a position of much greater risk than their more affluent counterparts. Cartmel (1997) Youth and Social Change: Individualization and Risk in Late Modernity, Buckingham: open University Press.
2006) "Entrepreneurial Self and 'Youth at Risk': exploring the horizon of identity in the twenty-first century", Journal of Youth Studies 9(1):.
The emergence of a working poor
In the next section, we examine the key labor market dynamics in the post-socialist countries of. We then discuss the dimensions of these changes in the context of the labor markets of the two cities in which we conducted our research. Four main interrelated processes have operated in the labor markets of the post-socialist world.
In 2005, the unemployment rate among surveyed households was on average 11 percent of the total sampled population in Petržalka and 9 percent in Nova Huta, which is higher than the city average. The incidence of unemployment was significantly higher among those living in surveyed households with equivalent incomes below 60 percent of the regional median (a typical measure of households at risk of poverty), and much lower in the highest income group (Table 7.3). . In Petržalka, 31 out of 150 surveyed households had at least one unemployed member of the household, while only 4 households had income from unemployment compensation, and in Nova Huta 35 out of 200.
The segmentation of the labor market and the emergence of in-work poverty are also associated with the feminization of some sectors of the labor market (domański 2002). For example, of the 41 percent of employed women in Petržalka who worked in basic service and elementary occupations, 36 percent of these women lived without a male partner in the same household. The insecurity of the formal labor market forces poorer families to engage in a variety of other economic practices in an effort to support family livelihoods (Gibson-Graham 2006; smith and stenning 2006; Williams and Round 2007).
However, the experience of self-employment varies depending on the position in the labor market.
