Negotiating and Regulating Social Security for Workers on the Margin: Innovations from the Global South

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Deadline March 25th 2024

The last two decades have seen a massive expansion of non-contributory cash transfers in the Global South, while the development of social insurance has received less attention. This is unsurprising as contributory social insurance schemes are regressive in contexts where only the minority in formal employment benefit. From the classical power resource approach, the insufficiency of social security for the working age population can also be explained with reference to the inability of informal sector workers to mobilise effectively to promote their interests against powerful actors in state and market.

In the study of unequal power relations, workers in marginal and often stigmatised sectors – such as domestic workers and waste pickers – are extraordinarily challenged in the fight to claim their social and economic rights given limited material and non-material resources. Consequently, it is of particular interest when workers in these sectors seem to improve their position, such as domestic workers in South Africa who now have the right to join unions and are entitled to minimum wage and unemployment insurance, at least on paper. Concurrent to the dearth of knowledge on social insurance development in the Global South, we see an interesting global trend in the expansion of platform work.[1] The common impetus of digitalised platform work provides a unique opportunity to study the unequal power relations and social insecurity concerns facing platform workers across very different contexts, such as Brazil, Georgia, India, and South Africa.

Thus, we encourage scholars to submit abstracts related to the above-mentioned countries that describe the social security rights (including labour rights) of these groups of workers as well as how they are regulated (or not) by the state (at various levels). We also want to understand whether/how these groups manage to organise and negotiate with the state and other relevant actors; particularly with respect to how /if they manage to overcome unequal power positions. Here, a pertinent point of analysis would be whether and how platform workers stand in a different position to the traditional sectors of domestic workers and waste pickers (or similar sectors yet to be identified).

Please send your abstract to justsociety@sam.sdu.dk on March 25^th, 2024, at the latest. Read more about JUST SOCIETY on our website, and reach out if you have any questions to Siff Lund Kjærgaard at sln@sam.sdu.dk