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The Political Economy of
Post-COVID Life and Work
in the Global South:
Pandemic and Precarity
Edited by Sandya Hewamanne · Smytta Yadav
International Political Economy Series
Series Editor
Timothy M. Shaw , University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA,
USA;
Emeritus Professor, University of London, London, UK
The global political economy is in flux as a series of cumulative crises
impacts its organization and governance. The IPE series has tracked its
development in both analysis and structure over the last three decades.
It has always had a concentration on the global South. Now the South
increasingly challenges the North as the centre of development, also
reflected in a growing number of submissions and publications on
indebted Eurozone economies in Southern Europe. An indispensable
resource for scholars and researchers, the series examines a variety of capi-
talisms and connections by focusing on emerging economies, companies
and sectors, debates and policies. It informs diverse policy communities
as the established trans-Atlantic North declines and ‘the rest’, especially
the BRICS, rise.
NOW INDEXED ON SCOPUS!
The Political
Economy
of Post-COVID Life
and Work
in the Global South:
Pandemic
and Precarity
Editors
Sandya Hewamanne Smytta Yadav
Department of Sociology School of Environment, Education,
University of Essex and Development
Essex, UK University of Manchester
Manchester, UK
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
The book is dedicated to the world’s low-income workers and informal
laborers who are coping with the pandemic and lockdowns while enduring
challenging working conditions exacerbated by COVID-19.
Acknowledgments
vii
Contents
ix
x CONTENTS
Index 263
List of Contributors
xi
xii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
xiii
xiv LIST OF TABLES
S. Hewamanne (B)
Department of Sociology, University of Essex, Essex, UK
e-mail: skhewa@essex.ac.uk
S. Yadav
School of Environment, Education, and Development, University of
Manchester, Manchester, UK
e-mail: smytta.yadav@manchester.ac.uk
1 After a scathing critique added by Hewamanne, this sentence was deleted by the end
of July 2021.
1 NEOLIBERALISM, INFORMALITY AND PRECARITY 3
‘company of one.’ The flexibilization of capital and labor promotes the so-
called gig economy, and neoliberal subjects invest in themselves to engage
in this economy by becoming self-reliant, risk-taking entrepreneurs. Thus
some define neoliberalism as a mode of governing through freedom that
gives individuals choice and the responsibility of navigating and enhancing
their own social worlds. Within this neoliberal understanding what it is to
be a ‘worker’ is also redefined leading to conflictual individual desires
and expectations of citizenship rights. In neoliberal times the worker has
become human capital, and any activity that generates salary or income,
gives satisfaction, increases one’s status within family and community and
promotes travel and civic engagements is an investment in human capital
(Foucault 2008: 226–235). With such an understanding of a ‘worker,’ it is
not surprising that the governments wash their hands off workers who are
engaged in precarious work as it is narratively produced and reproduced
as an individual choice routed in individual aspirations and self satisfac-
tion. The dominant narratives hide how the late capitalist, market-based
global economic systems create precarious livelihood opportunities which
are presented as opportunities for self improvement, or as enhancing one’s
own human capital status.
The gig economy refers to how self-employed contractors enable
‘just in time, on demand’ services, which consists of outsourcing work
performed by traditional employees via open call (Todolí-Signes 2017:
194). Such open calls facilitate unpredictable yet plentiful opportunities
for appropriately skilled independent providers. This definition applies to
varied job and skill levels starting from highly paid and valued skilled
computer services to low-paid assembly line manufacturing jobs consid-
ered unskilled work. Global assembly line work (which three chapters of
this volume cover) is part of the gig economy in that the temporariness
of the work is inbuilt although sold to workers as allowing them further
opportunities for self improvement via entrepreneurship. The work is
further fragmented through the increased use of casual workers for global
factory work, to the extent that the regular factory workforce is asked
to quit and re-join as casual workers. Again, the workers themselves are
made to believe that casual work is a free choice and that they are agents
of their own time and bodies as they can choose when and where to
work (Hewamanne 2020). Although at one level it allows for agency, the
workers by and large have lost sight of how they lose benefits such as paid
leave, medical care and factory pension fund contributions through casual
work. The awareness that the particular working arrangements within
1 NEOLIBERALISM, INFORMALITY AND PRECARITY 5
(Barrientos et al. 2010). It has been noted that the uneven impacts are
often differently felt by groups of workers in the same sector or industry
as capitalist development produces and relies on segmentation of the
labor market (Peck 1996). Not surprisingly, the sectors that are poorly
impacted are mostly occupied by women, and other marginalized groups.
Participation in economic globalization generates new employment
opportunities for marginalized people in the Global South. However,
this participation does not necessarily lead to same results experienced
by workers in the Global North such as high wages, good working
conditions or systems of social protection. Workers in the Global North
have won these rights after unionization and worker protests. Without
the ability to unionize the workers in the emerging economies of the
Global South have no traditional forms of recourse to move toward
obtaining better work conditions and higher wages. The discouraging
or downright prohibition of unionization, as in the global factories,
and the built in precarities more or less seal the powerless position of
informal sector workers within the Global South. The success narra-
tives surrounding neoliberal development valorizes the precarity while
simultaneously underlining the futility of unionization when jobs become
more like gigs—temporary and insecure. Such narratives also encourage
the individual advancement over collective organizing. In fact unions
throughout the Global South are disheartened by the worker turnover
which does not allow for consciousness raising toward collective orga-
nizing. Few unions and internationally funded NGOs have tried to
use creative means to educate constantly changing groups of precarious
workers within varied informal settings.
Hewamanne’s chapter in this volume highlights some of the difficulties
these initiatives encounter as a result of the prohibition of unionization
within global assembly line production. In addition the built in precarity,
and highly unfavorable work conditions and low pay lead to high turnover
further discouraging the emergence of organic leadership.
Economic globalization impacts Global South economies by increasing
cross-border interdependence and integrating various sectors of
economies to facilitate the smooth flow of goods, services, and people
through complex flexibilization of production, capital and markets. More-
over, the contemporary form of economic globalization is characterized
by a lack of environmental regulations, occupational health standards,
and discouraging of unionization and collective organizing to agitate for
labor rights. All this means that global pandemics such as COVID-19 are
1 NEOLIBERALISM, INFORMALITY AND PRECARITY 7
much more devastating to the emerging markets in the Global South than
to advanced industrial economies at the center of the world economic
system.
It is important to highlight that the economic globalization has also
been detrimental to groups of workers in the Global North especially to
those with limited skills and qualifications. Such workers were forced to
silently witness the manufacturing jobs that they have traditionally relied
on the move to countries in the Global South (Horner and Nadvi 2018).
The threat of manufacturing jobs moving across borders has been used
to curtail the powers of unionization, while workers at many skill levels,
including technology workers, have experienced casualization of their
work through moving of job categories to ‘just in time’ gig economic
sphere. These parallel yet differently experienced processes underline the
need for global level worker organizing for more meaningful economic
restructuring that aims for global worker rights and economic justice.
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