Search All

Migrants and migrant support groups work in a global environment which is increasingly anti-migration, linking migration with encroachment on the employment opportunities of local workers, with bringing in ‘alien’ values and ways of living and, in recent years, with terrorism and issues of national security. Migrant women live in a world where most women are still struggling to be able to exercise their rights, including the basic right to decent and productive work. Poorer migrant women workers work in a global environment which promotes temporary work and places more and more women in what is called the informal economy, a term which allows corporations and employers to evade their responsibilities to their workers but makes little sense to migrant workers who are subject to an intimidating array of rules and regulations, governing all aspects of what they can and cannot do. The only thing that is informal about the lives of poor migrant workers are the conditions under which they work and how they are paid. …

Organizing Women Workers in the Informal Economy explores the emergence of an alternative repertoire among women working in the growing informal sectors of the global South: the weapons of organization and mobilisation. This crucial book offers vibrant accounts of how women working as farm workers, sex workers, domestic workers, waste pickers, fisheries workers and migrant factory workers have organized for collective action. What gives these precarious workers the impetus and courage to take up these steps? What resources do they draw on in order to transcend their structurally disadvantaged position within the economy? And what continues to hamper their efforts to gain social recognition for themselves as women, as workers and as citizens? …