Building Cross‐Sector Careers in India's New Service Economy? Tracking Former Call Centre Agents in the National Capital Region

This article presents findings from a labour mobility survey of 250 former call centre agents in India's National Capital Region (September 2008) exploring individuals’ employment before, during and immediately after leaving India's high‐profile call centre ‘industry’. These data are combined with forty‐two in‐depth interviews conducted in India's NCR (July 2006 to August 2008) with call centre agents, managers, ex‐call centre agents, labour organizers and economic development officials, as well as representatives from different labour market intermediaries. The study gives a cautiously optimistic account about the call centre work and employment opportunities on offer in India's ‘IT Enabled Services – Business Processing Outsourcing’ (or ITES‐BPO) industry, and their implications for young urban middle class graduates based on: (i) the movement of around one fifth of the ex‐call centre agent sample into further study, facilitated by relatively high call centre salaries; (ii) the movement of ex‐call centre agents into higher paying job roles in a wide range of sectors including banking, IT, insurance, marketing, real estate and telecommunications; and (iii) the development of transferable skills in Indian call centres that are recognized by ex‐call centre agents and their subsequent employers as conferring a labour market advantage in other sectors of India's new service economy relative to colleagues without prior call centre work experience.     

Women's citizenship claims,labour market policy and globalisation

Policy and research frameworks concerned with both analysing and advancing women's position in the labour market are still oriented to the assumption that the jurisdictional unit of production relations is the nation‐state. Historically all citizenship claims have been predicated on the jurisdictional integrity and sovereignty of the nation‐state. However, contemporary patterns of globalisation (flows of capital, labour and policy making networks) indicate these assumptions may be anachronistic. This paper tables the problems and suggests some of their implications for bow we approach policy‐related analysis of women's labour market position.     

Labour Regime Transformation in Myanmar: Constitutive Processes of Contestation

This article studies the case of a workers’ strike in Myanmar's ready‐made garment sector to illustrate how differently‐situated actors have engaged at multiple scales to influence emerging forms of labour regulation in the country. The analysis is drawn out through the historicization of domestic regulatory transformation. As a hegemonic project targeting industrial peace for purposes of capital accumulation, Myanmar's labour regime has been shaped by various actors outside of government circles, including International Labour Organization (ILO) personnel, Myanmar trade unionists, foreign governments, transnational corporations, domestic capitalists and Myanmar workers. Proposing a multi‐scalar reading of labour regime transformation attentive to constitutive processes of contestation, the study analyses ways in which varied, and at times unofficial, relations coalesce to shape labour regulation.     

Women's Work and Market Hierarchies Along the Border of Lao PDR

Contrary to claims by some neo‐liberalists that international borders are becoming irrelevant, market liberalisation can actually enhance the effect that borders have on the lives of the people living along them. This study examines how the opening of border trade between Laos and Thailand has influenced gender divisions of labour, and definition of women's work along the border zone. Studies were undertaken in two border areas in Lao PDR—Sayaboury province and Kammoune province. In the former, cotton‐weaving activities were studied and in the latter, sticky rice box production. The production and trading of these commodities brought crucial cash income to the women studied and their households. How the women benefited from these activities in terms of income and status depends on how other members of the family perceived these activities. However, the formalisation of the border trade has changed women's ‘sense of space’ and their relations with men and other women.     

The Costs of Exclusion: Gender Job Segregation,Structural Change and the Labour Share of Income

While women's share of employment has risen in many countries over the last two decades, gender job segregation has worsened, with women increasingly excluded from ‘good’ jobs in the industrial sector. In this article, the determinants of gender job segregation are assessed using panel data for a broad set of developing countries covering the period 1991–2015. The effect of gender job segregation on all workers, via the labour share of income, is also analysed. The results identify two major contributors to gender job segregation — the rising capital/labour ratio and the ratio of female/male labour force participation rates — indicative of ‘crowding’ and exclusion as economies move up the industrial ladder. The analysis further indicates that the crowding of women into lower quality jobs has a negative effect on workers as a whole by dampening the labour share of income. Those processes are influenced by global and macroeconomic conditions and policies that have circumscribed the expansion of high‐quality jobs relative to labour supply, intensifying competition for ‘good’ jobs and weakening labour's bargaining power.     

‘English ain't English in the Australian workplace’: a narrative analysis of Korean migrant women's labour market experiences

Drawing upon human capital theory, this article examines the labour market experiences of Korean migrant women in Australia. Narrative analysis reveals that Korean migrant women experience post-entry barriers in the Australian labour market. These barriers are not only attributable to their English language skills but also to their cultural background and personal orientations' aspirations. This article finds that migrants whose language, cultural and personal orientation and academic qualifications are similar to those of the dominant culture tend to feel less disadvantaged in the labour market. The narrative analysis allows Korean migrant women to describe symbolically in their own words their labour market experiences and the decisions, factors and emotions that constitute their experiences. The findings reinforce an increasing call for incorporating the cultural and personal aspects of human capital (beyond linguistic proficiency) into an understanding of the post-entry labour market experiences of migrant workers in their adopted country.     

The Emergence of a Working Poor: Labour Markets,Neoliberalisation and Diverse Economies in Post‐Socialist Cities

Abstract: This paper examines the transformations of urban labour markets in two central European cities: Bratislava, Slovakia and Kraków, Poland. It highlights the emergence of in‐work poverty and labour market segmentation, which together are leading to a reconfiguration of the livelihoods and economic practices of urban households. The focus of the paper is on the growing phenomenon of insecure, poor‐quality, contingent labour. It examines the ways in which those who find themselves in, or on the margins of, contingent and insecure labour markets sustain their livelihoods. We ask how such workers and their households negotiate the segmentation of the labour market, the erosion of employment security and the emergence of in‐work poverty and explore the diverse economic practices of those who cannot rely solely on formal employment to ensure social reproduction. Further, we assess the articulations between labour market participation and exclusion, and other spheres of economic life, including informal and illegal labour, household social networks, state benefits and the use of material assets. We argue that post‐socialist cities are seeing a reconfiguration of class processes, as the materialities and subjectivities of class are remade and as the meaning of work and the livelihoods different forms of labour can sustain are changing.     

People,Space and Place: a Multidimensional Analysis of Unemployment in Metropolitan Labour Markets

It is becoming increasingly apparent that, in order to understand a range of socio-economic outcomes, research needs to be focused on a multi-dimensional approach that accounts for individual characteristics and behaviours together with locality and activity within space and place. Within labour market analysis there is a need to situate empirical analysis within a conceptual framework that considers both the assets of individuals within the labour force and the social and local labour market contexts in which they find themselves. Using a broad notion of employability, this paper develops an analysis of unemployment in Australia's metropolitan labour markets. Specifically it uses a combination of individual survey data and aggregate labour market data to consider the associations between these multi-level factors. It finds that, while individual characteristics are important in understanding unemployment in metropolitan areas, it is equally the case that the strength of spatially distinct labour markets also plays a role. The paper reaches the conclusion that, while contemporary labour market policy tends to focus on individual characteristics, there is a need to widen the policy understanding of labour market outcomes so that other broader contexts, including the impact of space and place, are also seen as being influential.     

SKILLS,EDUCATION, AND CANADIAN PROVINCIAL DISPARITY*

ABSTRACT We derive synthetic time series over the 1951–2001 period of the skills of labor market entrants for the 10 Canadian provinces from the 2003 ALL survey. The effect of the skills variable on regional income is significant and substantial. Skills acquired by one extra year of schooling result in an increase in per capita income of around 5 percent, which is close to microeconomic Mincerian estimates. Our literacy indicator does not outperform human capital indicators based on education. This contrasts sharply with recent cross‐country evidence and suggests substantial measurement error in cross‐country schooling data.     

EMPLOYERS AND SICKNESS INSURANCE

The Swedish Employers' Confederation (SAF) had already applied in the 1910s a strategy that companies should not compete with social benefits on the labour market. So SAF welcomed the introduction of national sickness insurance in 1955. The system included deductibles, which were seen as necessary in sickness insurance. Before the reform salaried employees had received sick pay from the employer and their compensation was 100%. Their organizations succeeded, in spite of SAF resistance, in getting supplementary contractual sick pay leading to elimination of deductibles. This paved the way for other organizations to negotiate solutions that gave full compensation for loss of earnings while sick. Consequently sickness rates became very high. Up to 1990 SAF was unable to stop the elimination of deductibles. The economic crisis around 1990 made it possible for politicians to introduce deductibles and statutory sick pay. This was in accordance with SAF's views. Increase in long‐term illness from 1997 led to a weakening of SAF's position. According to the unions, long‐term illness was due to bad work environments and measures should be taken to give employers incentives to improve working conditions. Supported by the unions, the social democratic government introduced increased financing responsibility for employers 2005.     

Women in the Urban Informal Sector: Perpetuation of Meagre Earnings

The argument of exploitation of women workers in the labour market notwithstanding, this article examines whether women in India are unable to participate fully in the labour market because they are required to combine their household activities with income yielding jobs. They are constrained to work in the neighbourhood of their residence (the location of the residence having been decided upon by male family members), and can access jobs only through informal contacts (which usually means they end up in jobs similar to those of the contact persons), both of which reduce their bargaining power considerably. The tendency for specialized activities to be concentrated in different geographic locations of a city further restricts the possibility of women workers being engaged in diverse jobs and thus aggravates the situation of an excess supply of labour in a particular activity. Constrained choice, limited contacts of women and physical segmentation of the labour market perpetuate forces that entrap women workers in a low‐income situation with worse outcomes than those of their male counterparts. Consequently with greater intensity of work they still continue to receive low wages, while residual participation in the labour market restricts the possibilities of skill formation and upward mobility. All of these factors offer a substantive basis for policy recommendations.     

Women's and Men's Work: The Production and Marketing of Fresh Food and Export Crops in Papua New Guinea

Fresh food markets have been a fixture of the social and economic landscape of urban and rural PNG since colonial times. They were often the first points of engagement with the market economy, especially for women, who as small‐scale producers, sold surplus produce from their food gardens located on communally‐owned land. Although local food markets have remained an important livelihood for women, the later adoption and expansion of perennial export cash crops like coffee and cocoa overshadowed food production for local markets as men dominated export crop production on land alienated from communal ownership for decades or permanently. New forms of social relations of production and more exclusive forms of land tenure emerged to accommodate export crop production that were very different from those governing the production and marketing of fresh food. Market values and a trend towards individualisation of production with less capacity to mobilise labour through reciprocal labour exchange networks have characterised export crop production. With the income benefits captured largely by men, women began redirecting their labour to fresh food production where they were able to exercise more control of production and income while still mobilising labour through indigenous labour exchange arrangements. Attempts by men to appropriate the income of women and sons’ labour in export cropping were greater during flush periods when income levels were high, and they were less likely to attempt to appropriate this income in low crop periods when incomes were lower. However, with the recent emergence of female entrepreneurers earning relatively large sums of money in large‐scale, profit‐driven vegetable production, the moral frameworks governing food production are coming to resemble those governing export crops, and making labour more difficult to mobilise. Despite women being key players in these changes, we argue there is an emerging risk that men will attempt to assert control over this income or move into vegetable production themselves and possibly marginalise women in the process.     

Constrained Labour Agency and the Changing Regulatory Regime in China

Using the concept of ‘constrained agency’ introduced by Neil Coe and David Jordhus‐Lier, this article attempts to evaluate the possibilities and constraints facing labour agency in the Pearl River Delta in China. By reviewing the social, economic and political background of the changing labour market and labour regulations in China, and through an intensive case study of a workers’ strike and its consequences, the author argues that Chinese migrant workers have begun to challenge the state's regulatory regime on labour, which is based on individual rights. However, the introduction of a regulatory framework based on collective rights is being impeded by the party‐state's manipulation of trade unions and the strong influence of global capital on local labour policy.     

Structural Change,the Social Policy Environment and Female Employment in Turkey

Since the 1970s, a series of demand and supply related changes have led to significant labour market transformations which have brought about a sustained increase in female employment throughout the world. While similar transformations have also been underway in Turkey, the country appears to be one of the rare exceptions to worldwide trends. During the last two decades both female labour force participation and female employment rates have declined at national level. In this article, two sets of questions are posed to explore the factors likely to influence female labour force participation. One set of questions pertains to the society‐specific dynamics of structural change in employment patterns in Turkey, with particular reference to the level and composition of employment in the service sector. A second set of questions is posed to examine labour market relations and the social policy environment in Turkey, and their impact on the demand for and supply of female labour. Current changes in the prevailing policy environment are considered to highlight a certain contradiction in the attitudes of decision makers who seem to be faced with a trade‐off between continuing adherence to conservative patriarchal values and the objectives of increasing labour force participation and combating poverty.     

Conditional Cash Transfers and Social Mobility: The Role of Asymmetric Structures and Segmentation Processes

This article seeks to advance existing research on conditional cash transfers (CCTs) by centring the analysis of their long‐term impact on the reproduction of poverty and exclusion. To date, most analyses and assessments of CCTs’ long‐term impact have been based on simulations focused on specific parameters such as income changes and educational attainment. This study takes as its starting point the assumption that any efforts to break the cycle of chronic poverty and exclusion must address their underlying structures and processes. To that end, it presents a social mobility analysis of Uruguay's Asignaciones Familiares and its impact on residential segregation, educational segmentation and labour market segmentation. Based on empirical data from qualitative interviews, household surveys and existing research studies, the programme is found to insufficiently address these asymmetric processes. Without accompanying structural reforms, this limitation will significantly constrain the programme's capacities to promote beneficiaries’ social mobility by breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty.     

Linking Gentrification and Labour Market Precarity in the Contemporary City: A Framework for Analysis

The interplay between intensifying labour market precarity and gentrification constitutes a hitherto under‐researched topic in the fields of labour and urban geography. To rectify this lacuna, we argue that gentrification and labour flexibilisation are both socio‐spatial manifestations of capital's efforts to confront crises of accumulation. Distinguishing between what we call “weak” and “strong” links between them, and drawing upon the concepts of “gentrification‐supporting” and “gentrification‐fostered” labour flexibility, we outline a framework for connecting gentrification and precarity. This allows us to make links between the restructuring of the built environment and the reorganisation of work in the post‐industrial city; it also allows us to show how workers, through their agency, can shape rent gaps in the contemporary city.     

Dimensions and dynamics of residential segregation by income in urban Canada, 1991–1996

This paper examines the trends in residential segregation by income (post-transfer, pretax income) in the thirty-nine largest Canadian urban areas between 1991 and 1996. The study is motivated by the relative lack of attention paid to residential segregation by income in the Canadian context and by conceptual arguments linking compromised life chances and increased social tensions for the populations of highly segregated cities. We investigated several dimensions of segregation using five different measures (we focus on three of these here given the correlation structure of the measures) to examine changes in segregation between 1991 and 1996, a period characterised by economic recession, cutbacks in social programs and a widening of inequality in market incomes at the national scale. Overall, income segregation increased in most urban areas across all dimensions of segregation during the time period, with particularly high degrees of segregation observed in prairie cities (Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Regina). Of the three largest metropolitan areas (Vancouver, Toronto and Montréal), Montréal was the most consistently segregated. We also find that increases in spatial separation and spatial concentration by income occurred despite the fact that at the national scale, the tax and transfer system appeared to be adequately redressing a rise in inequality in labour and market incomes (as demonstrated by the lack of change in post-transfer national income inequality measures during a period when inequality in market and labour incomes rose sharply). This implies that the lived experience of changes in income distribution are unlikely fully captured by aspatial, national-scale measures and that intra-urban measures with a spatial dimension are an important indicators of inequality in Canadian society.     

Transitions to Work: Masculine identities,youth inequality and labour market change

In this article, the initial transitions of white working-class male post-compulsory school leavers in two British cities are investigated. In the context of economic restructuring, the decline of manufacturing employment, and the rise in young women's educational achievements, it has been argued that poorly educated young men are increasingly disadvantaged in the labour market. Indeed, this may be the first generation of young men in the post-war period that will experience downward mobility compared to their fathers. In an earlier article, the author explored the labour market aspirations of white working-class boys living on peripheral local authority estates in Cambridge and Sheffield and in their final year at school. Despite the decline of manufacturing employment, they hoped to enter typically 'male' jobs in, for example, the car industry in both cities and in the steel industry in Sheffield. In this article, the author explores their labour market experiences in the year since they left school and their sense of themselves as masculine workers in the context of debates emphasising a growing 'crisis' of masculinity.     

Food in the City: Urban Food Geographies and ‘Local’ Food Sourcing in Melbourne and San Diego County

Perceptions of food systems and food acquisition decisions are grounded in specific socio‐economic and environmental contexts. Working in two relatively affluent urban communities in Melbourne, Australia and San Diego County, USA, this article explores the ways that individuals perceive their food systems, where they acquire food, and their definitions of ‘local’ sourcing. Surveys and interviews reveal a clear discrepancy between the ideals and the reality of food acquisition decision‐making, particularly the desire to eat ‘local food’. Survey respondents' realities do not live up to their expectations. These practices can largely be explained by the interplay between the respondents' perceived priorities, food preferences, dietary requirements, and decision‐making constraints in particular urban geographies. Further research is needed on the role of perceptions in food decision‐making in specific geographic contexts.     

Equality‐led Development and the Demand‐ and Supply‐side Effects

This contribution to the Forum Debate on global development focuses on the dimension of functional income distribution between labour and capital and its demand‐side and supply‐side effects. The article summarizes recent literature that has sought to explain the reasons behind the global fall in the labour share. It then discusses the demand‐side effects of the declining wage share on growth, based on the post‐Keynesian/post‐Kaleckian literature. The author presents an alternative policy scenario for the G20 based on a mix of increasing wage share and public investment, before discussing the supply‐side effects of rising inequality. The article concludes with some policy implications for equality‐led development.