2022: Laura Alfers & co: book/ seminar “Social Contracts and Informal Workers in the Global South”

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Laura Alfers, WIEGO & NALSU: “Social Contracts and Informal Workers in the Global South”

THE BOOK: In a context where calls for a new social contract abound, “Social Contracts and Informal Workers in the Global South” focuses on workers in the informal economy, who represent over 60 per cent of the global workforce, to advocate for radically new conceptualisations of state-society, capital-labour and state-capital-labour relations. Bridging social contract theories, both mainstream and critical, with cross-national evidence and case studies, this book sheds light on how many existing social contract models stigmatize informal workers and are irrelevant, inadequate and unjust. Instead of ideologically driven top-down calls to revitalise social contracts, it advocates for bottom-up initiatives focused on the demands of the working poor in the informal economy.

Contributors include Laura Alfers, Françoise Carré, Martha Chen, Salonie Muralidhara Hiriyur, Rachel Moussié, Ana Carolina Ogando, Sophie Plagerson, Sarah Orleans Reed, Sally Roever, Michael Rogan, Taylor Cass Talbott and Marlese von Broembsen.

This is an open access book, with all chapters available at:
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/book/9781839108068/9781839108068.xml

DETAILS: This is a recording of a blended event in the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) Labour Studies Seminar Series, held on Thursday, 22 September 2022 4pm, at Barratt Lecture Theatre 3, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa.

SPEAKER: Laura Alfers is the Director of the Social Protection Programme at Women in Informal Employment: Globalising & Organising (WIEGO), and a NALSU Research Associate. Laura’s research interests focus on the intersections of social policy and employment. She holds a PhD in Development Studies (Social Policy) from the University of KwaZulu- Natal, and an MPhil in Development Studies from Cambridge University.

OTHER EDITORS: Martha (Marty) Chen is an Affiliated Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. A co-founder of WIEGO, she is an experienced development practitioner and scholar, with a specialisation in employment, gender and poverty with a focus on the working poor in the informal economy. Dr. Chen received a PhD in South Asia Regional Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and worked for two decades in India and Bangladesh.

Sophie Plagerson is a Visiting Associate Professor at the Centre for Social Development in Africa, University of Johannesburg. She is currently based in the Netherlands and working as an independent consultant. She holds a PhD in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her background is in research and advocacy, working in academic and non-governmental organizations on social development and health issues in Africa, South East Asia, and Latin America.

HOSTS: The Series is run by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) in partnership with the Departments of Sociology & Industrial Sociology, and Economics & Economic History, Rhodes University and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES).

ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, NALSU is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team, including from the disciplines of Sociology and Economics, NALSU has a democratic, non‐sectarian, non-aligned and pluralist practice, and active relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. We draw strength from our location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and post-apartheid contradictions, are keenly felt. NALSU is named in honour of Neil Hudson Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in an apartheid jail in 1982 following brutality and torture.

MORE: https://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu