- Back to forthcoming events
ReWorking Work: Labour and Livelihoods in the Global South
Philomathia Social Sciences Research Symposium
Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
29 June – 1st July 2022
The contemporary trends in global labour demonstrate that today’s world of work is fraught with fragility and vulnerability. The gradually shrinking proportion of waged employees remains concentrated in the so-called Global North while workers in the Global South suffer from precarious employment, informal employment and underemployment. The recent Covid-19 pandemic made these differences even more pronounced: the nature of global capital accumulation and labour absorption regimes, combined with the highly sectoral nature of socio-economic impacts of the recession, meant that some workers have shouldered the bulk of the burden more than others.
As policy makers around the globe deliberate the socio economic-recovery plans, we take the crisis as an opportunity to pause and reflect: what processes have been driving these long-standing inequalities? How have they been experienced by the workers? How have they manifested at individual, institutional and global levels? Can the crisis become an opportunity for systemic transformation?
The symposium comprises a research discussion forum (paper presentations) and a policy-and-practice oriented roundtable discussions. We invite:
Paper presentations
We look at ‘Environment’, ‘Technology‘, ‘Gender‘ and ‘Education‘ as strategic areas of both concern and opportunity. We seek contributions that describe, analyse and question the ways in which work and labour have been conceptualised to date. The objective is to re-evaluate the current theorizations and approaches and to design new analytical frameworks that can support, fuel and advance the global transformation of work. We invite both conceptual and empirical papers that consider a critical perspective within these following broad thematic areas, focusing specifically on people, processes and spaces in the Global South.
The presentations must not exceed 15 minutes. Full papers are encouraged but not required.
Roundtable discussions
While the research papers consider the past and the present, the roundtable discussion sessions turn to what might be possible. The sessions will focus on what might be done to help solve some of the challenges discussed elsewhere in the symposium. In particular, policy, business, research, and developmental interventions will be considered. The session also welcomes active discussions of how to make the policy design, development, monitoring and evaluation more participatory/inclusive.
The roundtable discussions will comprise a brief introduction by the convenor, and a series of 2 min pitches (no slides) by the participants, followed by discussion.
Work and technology
Fuelled by technological advances, labour processes, organisational forms and standards are changing rapidly, generating both new opportunities and challenges for workers. These include transformations of traditional labour relationships and dissolution of geographical work boundaries and cause manifold shifts of how societies organise work, in legal, economic, social and cultural dimensions. Contributions are encouraged to engage with the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in creating, sustaining and transforming work. ICT-based innovations have the potential to create new work opportunities that offer an alternative to traditional employment but these are overshadowed by persistent challenges of the digital economy. While ICTs can improve productivity, reduce inefficiencies and address unemployment blackspots, they also trigger technological unemployment and further commodification of labour, while threatening autonomy and privacy.
Papers are invited to address the following broad questions: What has the current crisis revealed about the role of technology in shaping working lives? What types of technologies are likely to play a role? What are the perils and prospects envisioned? Can technology attenuate the harsh effects that the crisis is likely to have on workers’ lives? How can we ensure that the emergent forms of technology-enabled work contribute to workers welfare and wellbeing?
Work in a changing environment
This session considers how environmental changes are impacting work, and also the potential for substantial green job creation going forwards. Most people’s work is directly or indirectly dependent upon their immediate environment. The most obvious example of this is agriculture-based livelihoods. Yet the disruptive effects of a changing climate are impacting work in other ways, through increased droughts and floods disrupting water supplies and sometimes damaging infrastructure, through price increases in raw materials, and through high temperatures making workplaces inhospitable. One proposed solution is green jobs which tackle environmental problems while also creating work, and we welcome interventions which interrogate this concept and consider their potential.
Papers are invited to address the following broad questions: How is a changing climate disrupting current and future landscapes of work for communities across the Global South? What scope is there for a reconciliation between the perceived imperatives of industrialisation and economic growth, with environmental conservation in climate-vulnerable contexts? How might different stakeholders come together to promote the generation of greener, better jobs for the next generation?
Work and gender
Across the Global South, marginalised genders are overrepresented in unpaid or low-paid, informal, and precarious work. Gender equality and labour force participation goals are increasingly prioritised in the global development agenda. This session focuses on the complex relationships between gender, work and other intersectional factors such as migration, age, ethnicity or class, with respect to how this influences young people’s livelihoods in the global South. We welcome contributions across and beyond these themes, exploring how gender and labour intersect to produce distinct realities for men, women and/or non-binary workers.
Papers are invited to address the following broad questions: How does gender identity shift an individual’s aspirations, socio-spatial experiences, or societal expectations of work? What are the boundaries of ‘female work’, who draws them, and how do they shape women’s experiences/opportunities of domestic and ‘productive’ labour? What is the role of socially reproductive labour in producing and maintaining conditions of ‘economically productive work’?
Work and education
Amid technological revolutions, environmental crises, and a deficit of quality livelihood opportunities, education systems are tasked with equipping students to navigate an uncertain future. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted how wealth, digital divides and gender conditions access to, and quality of, educational opportunities. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”, sets an ambitious vision for education systems across the world that are holistic, resilient, and relevant. Growing recognition of the importance of so-called ’21st Century Skills’ or soft skills to both citizens and potential employers also points to a need to rethink current educational approaches and curricula.
Papers are invited to address the following broad questions: How do educational disparities manifest across geographical locations and intersecting identities? How does education map onto livelihood opportunities? How do students perceive the purpose of education and its importance in accessing work? What aspects of education are neglected in formal systems, and what can we learn from the myriad ways in which students are educating themselves through both formal and informal systems?
Organizers: Katarzyna Cieslik, Anna Barford, Grace Mueller, and Kate Brockie.
Youth in a Time of Crisis: Livelihood Diaries from Nepal and Indonesia During COVID-19
December 2021
The Asian Development Bank, Cambridge University Institute for Sustainability Leadership and Restless Development teamed up to undertake innovative research on the impacts of COVID-19 on young people’s livelihoods. The pilot study explored how some of the most vulnerable groups of young people experienced and responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in Nepal and Indonesia. Through diaries collected weekly over four months, this youth-led project generated new insights and recommendations that can inform future research and practice.
The event was held for two days (two 1.5-hour online sessions on the 8th and 9th December 2021, each day commencing at 17:30 (GMT +08:00) to share the methodological approach, explore the findings, and hear directly from the research team themselves. After the presentations, facilitated discussions on Day 1 focused on the research methodology and how this and other innovative participatory qualitative research can contribute to COVID-19 recovery planning, and what the benefits of funding this type of research are. While Day 2, focused on the findings in Nepal and Indonesia, and consider how this research can guide the response.
Watch the event here:
COP26, Green zone: Youth-led research showcase on the impact of climate change on youth livelihoods and health in Africa
8 November 2021
This intergenerational discussion showcased new findings from two youth-led research projects in Uganda and Zimbabwe, looking at the impact of climate change on youth livelihoods and of global heating on health respectively. The event shared insights about the distinctive climate change related challenges facing young people and their communities and suggest routes to greater resilience and effective adaptation across Africa.
Let us be heard: young people and climate change
19th October 2021
Climate change is having a widespread and devastating effect on the environment and people’s lives. The worst polluters are often geographically, economically and socially distant from those facing the gravest impacts. Young people, especially those in countries such as Uganda, are the generation who bear the least responsibility, yet new research shows that they are already adapting to the extreme impacts of climate change. They find their education, family and social lives, career prospects and wellbeing threatened, but their voices still going unheard.
In this event, we hear from researchers in Uganda and the UK about how meaningful collaboration with young people is essential for bringing fresh insights and generating new approaches to address the climate crisis.
The Social Life of Care – online conference
14-15 May 2021
Can we imagine, or indeed survive in, a world without care? From public health to domestic arrangements to climate change, the language of care permeates our everyday lives. It is an emotion – one can care deeply about someone or something; it is labour – women disproportionately take on caring and emotional burden; it is a form of relation – children and other dependents are cared for; it may also be a form of protest – to draw upon Audre Lorde, self-care can be political warfare. There are also repeated injunctions about the global ‘crisis of care’. This crisis may emerge from, as feminist theorisation has persistently highlighted, the relegation of care and social reproduction to secondary status in relation to income-generation and financialisation, as the ongoing Covid19 crisis has demonstrated. This two-day international conference will treat ‘care’ as an object/subject of investigation with particular focus on understanding global registers of care – how is care conceptualised, practiced, and represented in varied social, economic, political, and geographical contexts?
The conference, hosted by the Centre for Research in Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, is currently planned as an online event. The organisers are keen to make the most of this format by facilitating an international dialogue on care and would like to particularly encourage participation from scholars based in the Global South.
Cambridge Youth Symposium
10th December 2020
Each term we run a symposium which brings together researchers interested in young people’s working lives from within the University of Cambridge and beyond. This time we enjoyed a selection of presentations from a selection of postgraduate students from the Departments of Geography and Sociology: Rijak Grover, Iyeyinka Omigbodun, Debolina Majumber, Garima Sahai, and Kate Brockie.
Geographies of Work in the Pandemics and Beyond – Virtual Seminar Series
September 7th 2020
A four-part seminar series on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world of work, livelihoods & employment.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused serious disruptions across the world in various dimensions of life. The realm of work is among them and has emerged as a particularly contentious area of discussion. Consider, for example, discussions on what counts as essential work, or how just-in-time supply chains that rely on minimising labour use, or new ‘online’ ways of doing hitherto offline work, or the anticipated growth in unemployment as a result of this crisis. We take this as an opportunity to ask: How has the pandemic reinforced or challenged our understanding of work, working lives and livelihoods? We take the environment, technology, global markets and civic potency as the anchoring themes to engage with this question as they open up the space to explore where, how, by whom and to what end work is being done, what the nature of the disruption is and what the future of work looks like. In this seminar series, we bring together academics, practitioners and activists to share their experience and expertise on these issues and build new conversations on the geographies of work.
1. September 7th: Work and Global Value Chains
Ashok Kumar, Birkbeck University of London; Helena Pérez Niño, University of Cambridge; Matthew Amengual, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
2. September 14th: Work and the Environment
Bhaskar Vira, University of Cambridge; Puja Shakya, Practical Action Nepal; Joseph Yaro Awetori, University of Ghana
3. September 21st: Work and Technology
Aditya Ray, The Open University; Nyamwaya Munthali, University of Wageningen; Dorothea Kleine, University of Sheffield
4. September 28th: Work and Civic Potency: Social Movements and Social Justice
Orlanda Ruthven, Gram Vaani; Nivedita Narain, PRADAN India; Feyzi Ismail, SOAS University of London
The Getting By Workshop
April 2019
On Tuesday 2 and Wednesday 3 April, Murray Edwards College hosted a workshop entitled, Getting by: how will young people make a living? The workshop was based on the findings from a joint research project and survey conducted by the University of Cambridge and Restless Development, an international NGO, which aims to provide insight into youth experiences and opinions of work in developing and emerging economies.
The workshop focused on defining a programme of work that will help to overcome the challenges faced by the projected rise in the youth population in the Global South. There were summaries from experts on relevant issues in economic and social policy (including education and skills), cultural and social aspects, and on practical experiments in enterprise and job creation. In addition, young people (or ‘Game Changers’ as they chose to be called) from developing countries were engaged to identify the nature of the challenge from their perspective, and suggest next steps for policy and practice interventions.