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2. Urban Politics in the Middle East
- Author:
- Mona Harb, Marc Lynch, Jillian Schwedler, Gehad Abaza, and Munqeth Othman
- Publication Date:
- 10-2023
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
- Abstract:
- Urban politics has received growing attention in the anthropology, sociology, and political science of the MENA region. In line with global trends, questions of scale, territory, flows and connectivities and materialities have come to the fore, with a wide range of creative and novel lines of inquiry connecting the global to the hyper-local and every scale in between. In February 2023, POMEPS partnered with the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut and The Policy Initiative think tank for a workshop in Beirut to bring together an interdisciplinary group of young scholars from across the region to explore questions of urban life, politics, and culture. The papers moved beyond more traditional political science topics such as municipal government, decentralization, clientelistic voting, protests, and clientelism. While those themes certainly operated in the background, the authors assembled in Beirut pushed to shift the lens towards multi-scalar ethnographic modes of inquiry, highlighting the materialities and relationalities of the hyper-local, examining sites and places which concentrate power dynamics.
- Topic:
- Economics, Migration, Politics, Race, Religion, Sectarianism, Culture, Syrian War, Mobility, Urban, Trade, Music, Transportation, Cities, Heritage, Resistance, Labor Market, Domestic Work, and Urbicide
- Political Geography:
- Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Tehran, Baghdad, Algeria, North Africa, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Beirut, Cairo, Tunis, and Aqaba
3. Migration and Decent Work: Challenges for the Global South
- Author:
- Lucía Ramírez Bolívar and Jessica Corredor Villamil
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Book
- Institution:
- Dejusticia
- Abstract:
- Migration and Decent Work: Challenges for the Global South features nine chapters written by sixteen activists, academics, and members of civil society who have worked on the issue of migration from different angles and who address the challenge of migrants’ labor inclusion from an interdisciplinary and rights-based perspective. Their contributions offer an overview of migrants’ and refugees’ right to work in a range of countries in the global South—from Mexico to India to Argentina to Turkey—based on an analysis of local contexts, public policies, and the everyday realities faced by these workers.
- Topic:
- Migration, Labor Issues, Refugees, Trafficking, Asylum, Inclusion, Domestic Work, and Sex Work
- Political Geography:
- South Asia, Middle East, South America, and Global South
4. Domestic Workers: Postcolonial Inheritance and International Relations
- Author:
- Karen Johanna Pozo
- Publication Date:
- 05-2022
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Contexto Internacional
- Institution:
- Institute of International Relations, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
- Abstract:
- The discipline of International Relations (IR) in Latin American is still dominated by positivist and Westernized research. This creates challenges for international studies such as how to visualise the subjects or ‘sujetas’ who participate in national and international politics but are ignored in this field, and how to value the current postcolonial research, which offers critical perspectives that equilibrate the epistemic balance and help build adequate tools to understand different regional phenomena. By analysing a case study of the Association of Women Domestic Employees of Paraguay, this article clarifies how a postcolonial approach enriches the field of IR. This study argues that postcolonialism contributes to this field by making visible cognitive subjects and ‘sujetas’, who offer an alternative knowledge construction to rethink international relations with a meta-theoretical extension, visible. Postcolonialism is the theoretical basis of this qualitative research. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and participant observations. This article suggests and concludes that women domestic workers as ‘political subjects’ enrich international relations by offering critical views to the research carried out in the subfields of foreign policy analysis, international political economy, and regionalism.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Political Economy, Post Colonialism, Domestic Work, and Postcolonial Theory
- Political Geography:
- Latin America and Paraguay
5. Livelihood Transitions of Women Workers During COVID-19: Domestic Workers in Dhaka
- Author:
- Jaila Kabeer, Lopita Huq, Taslima Aktar, Saklain Al Mamun, Afsana Alam, Shravasti Roy Nath, and Razia Sultana
- Publication Date:
- 12-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), Brac University
- Abstract:
- The paper draws on primary research into the conditions of domestic workers in Bangladesh and how they coped with the shocks and disruptions associated with COVID-19. We can see our research as a lens to view the lives and livelihoods of workers with no legal or social protection and with the tenuous relationship they have with their employers. The country’s trade unions bypassed these workers during this unprecedented crisis which they had to deal with almost entirely on their own. We carried out detailed qualitative interviews by telephone between January and February 2021 with 30 female domestic workers aged over 18 years. These were “untied” domestic workers who worked for more than one employer and lived in their own accommodation. We asked them to recall their lives and livelihoods before COVID-19 (Jan–Feb 2020), to discuss the period of strict lockdown (Mar–Apr 2020) and then the changes that may have occurred after April when the strict lockdown was lifted. Almost all domestic workers in our study had lost their jobs within a day after the lockdown was announced, pushing them into extreme uncertainty. Since domestic workers were the main breadwinners for most of the households in our sample, the loss of their jobs meant a total or substantial loss of income for at least two-thirds of our respondents. Some domestic workers received government relief, but lack of NID cards and contacts with influential community members made accessing it very difficult and impossible for some.
- Topic:
- Women, COVID-19, and Domestic Work
- Political Geography:
- Bangladesh and South Asia
6. Uncovering the Crisis: Care Work in the Time of Coronavirus
- Author:
- Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
- Publication Date:
- 03-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
- Abstract:
- The pandemic uncovered a reality that has long been brewing in which inequalities, injustices, and asymmetries are violently embedded in the order of society. The crisis of wage-based society did not alter the unequal distribution of work, nor did it recognise it as an integral element of all lives – despite how feminisms have long politicised this discussion. This dossier focuses on three main areas around three main areas: communities, houses/homes, and domestic and care work.
- Topic:
- Labor Issues, Feminism, Pandemic, COVID-19, Domestic Work, and Caregivers
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
7. Senegal: Making Domestic Resource Mobilization Work to Sustain Growth and Improve Service Delivery
- Author:
- Birahim Bouna Niang and Ahmadoi Aly Mbaye
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development (CGD)
- Abstract:
- Senegal’s recent economic performance is impressive. For the first time, Senegal has achieved a GDP growth rate of more than 6 percent for three consecutive years (2015–2017), and per capita GDP has increased at an annual average of 4.1 percent. In parallel, progress in fiscal revenues has been recorded, with the ratio of average revenues to GDP increasing by 5.7 percentage points between 2000-2002 and 2014-2017, placing Senegal above the regional average of 15 percent. Notwithstanding, the performance of the Senegalese tax system is limited by the country’s narrow tax base, largely attributable to a sizable informal sector. Despite accounting for more than half of GDP, Senegal’s informal sector makes up less than 3 percent of total tax collection. Revenue collection is also limited by the fast-growing array of exemptions, and by tax expenditures. These special dispensations mainly went to multinationals with local branches in Senegal. Tax expenditure more than doubled between 2010 and 2014, from18.4 percent of tax revenues and 3.4 percent of GDP to 40 percent of tax revenues and 7.8 percent of GDP. According to some estimates, the cumulative costs are close to 18 percent of annual GDP. Other factors deterring effective domestic resource mobilization include poor governance and the limited technical capacity of the tax administration, failures of the information system, and weak system transparency. Expenditures are often ineffective, particularly in the education and health sectors. Improving the state of public finances requires reforms to strengthen technical and institutional capacities and to adapt the management framework in view of Senegal’s entry into the hydrocarbon era. This might include setting up a public finance monitoring committee, adopting new budgetary rules consistent with those set by the West African Economic and Monetary Union, building relevant tax administration capacities. On the expenditure front, actions are needed to improve the targeting of support programs for vulnerable groups, and to implement capacity-building programs for government officials in charge of project evaluation, including in the Planning Directorate and in technical ministries. Lastly, a systematic ex ante and ex post evaluation of public investments is needed.
- Topic:
- Labor Issues, Economic Growth, Services, Mobilization, and Domestic Work
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Senegal
8. A perspective on domestic work based on interviews in Lima,Peru
- Author:
- My Rafstedt
- Publication Date:
- 12-2017
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
- Abstract:
- his policy brief aims to spark reflection on the conditions of domestic workers, and the importance of independent institutions like trade unions for protecting their rights. Drawing on conversations with domestic workers in Lima, Peru, it shows how particularly those who live with their employees are often subjected to maltreatment. Trade unions perform essential services by informing domestic workers of their labour rights, empowering them to demand these from their employers, and providing legal aid. Parallels are drawn to the au pair programme in Norway. Despite a comprehensive legal framework, au pairs may face similar problems associated with living in the home of the employer, with the additional insecurity of working and living in an unfamiliar country. It is vital that independent organizations for the protection of the rights of au pairs in Norway can continue their work, to limit abusive labour conditions.
- Topic:
- Trade, Labor Rights, Domestic Work, and Trade Unions
- Political Geography:
- South America and Peru