Special Initiatives

Exposure Dialogue Programmes

 

WIEGO often undertakes initiatives that supplement or augment the activities of our core programmes and global projects. These Special Initiatives include technical and policy dialogues; collaborative research and advocacy; commissioned research for international agencies; and conferences or public events. Marty Chen, the International Coordinator of WIEGO based at the Harvard Kennedy School, coordinates these Special Initiatives, many of which are done in collaboration with our members or other partners.

Recent Activities

Agenda-Setting Research Conference

In March 2011, in Cape Town, South Africa, WIEGO organized a conference to plan an agenda of research on the informal economy/informal employment that would build on – but also broaden and deepen – existing research. Conference speakers and participants were asked to reflect on recent trends in labour markets in general and informal labour markets in particular; what is causing or driving informality; and what should be done in response to informality; and then to specify key unanswered questions and identify promising areas for future research. The aim was to identify research questions and topics that would expand research on informal employment to new topic areas as well as additional regions of the world, both developing and developed. Fifty-five participants from around the world participated in the conference. Read more and see the Conference Report.

On-Going Collaborations

Cornell-SEWA-WIEGO Exposure Dialogue Programme

Since January 2004, WIEGO has co-organized a series of Exposures and Dialogues with SEWA and Cornell University. This initiative promotes a dialogue between mainstream economists from Cornell University, activists from the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), and researchers from the WIEGO network around key assumptions of neo-classical economics – and neo-liberal economic policies – which “trouble” ground-level activists and researchers working on issues of employment and labour. The hope is to deepen understanding on both sides of certain key economic issues through serious dialogue and, thereby, to avoid the familiar stylized debates between heterodox thinkers and neo-classical economists.

During the Exposures, the Cornell-SEWA-WIEGO team, accompanied by local facilitator-interpreters, stay in groups of 2-3 with informal workers and their families for two days and nights, working alongside them in their work and in their homes. For instance, alongside their hosts in South Africa, the various members of the Dialogue Group tried their hand at either making cement blocks, stitching clothes, making Zulu beadwork bracelets, growing vegetables and raising poultry, cutting hair and trimming beards, or selling newspapers and medicinal herbs. At the end of the Exposure, the Dialogue Group reflects – together with the hosts – on their personal experience of the Exposure, then engages in a technical dialogue on issues raised. In between the Exposure Dialogues, the Dialogue group has met for two additional technical dialogues. The topics covered in the technical dialogues have included: minimum wage and other interventions in labour markets; the structure and dynamics of labour markets; social protection for the informal workforce; and the impact of international trade on informal workers. The technical dialogue in South Africa focused on the problem of unemployment in South Africa, including barriers to informal self-employment. The Dialogue Group also discusses policies, services, and other interventions that might best support the livelihoods of their hosts.

After most Exposure Dialogues, with local partners, the Dialogue Group organizes a policy dialogue or some other public event to which policy makers, academics, and activists are invited.

Exposure Dialogues organized to date

Ahmedabad, India (2004 and 2008)
Durban, South Africa (2007 and 2011)
Oaxaca, Mexico (2009)

Technical Dialogues

Harvard University (2004)
Cornell University (2006)
SEWA (2008)

Policy Dialogues

  • Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC), WIEGO and the Institute for Local Government Studies (ILGS) Policy Dialogue (Accra, October 12, 2011) – panellists included officials from the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), from the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, and from the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare; attendees included representatives of informal worker organizations, trade unions and others with an interest in the informal economy in Ghana
  • The Second Economy: Linkages between the Formal and Informal Economies (Pretoria, South Africa, 2007) – co-organized with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and the Department of Trade and Industry in South Africa
  • National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (New Delhi, India, 2008) – organized with and hosted by the National Council of Applied Economics Research
  • Social Protection and Informality in Mexico (Mexico City, Mexico, 2009) – organized with and hosted by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC/CEPAL) at its headquarters in Mexico City

Other Events

Photo Exhibit on Informal Workers in Durban/eThewini (Durban, 2007) – commissioned and organized by WIEGO colleagues at the University of KwaZulu-Natal

Book Launch of Membership-Based Organizations of the Poor (New Delhi, 2008) – co-organized with SEWA and Routledge Press

Field Visit to National Employment Guarantee Act site (Gujarat State, India, 2008) – co-organized with SEWA and DISHA (a mass-based organization of informal workers)

After each exposure visit and technical dialogue, members of the Dialogue Group write personal reflections and technical notes based on what they saw, heard and thought. These are published in compendia available electronically on the Cornell University and WIEGO websites:

The first and most tangible outcome of the Cornell-SEWA-WIEGO Exposure Dialogue Programme was a conference and volume on membership-based organizations of the poor (see below for more details). Other outcomes of the Exposure Dialogue Programme include academic papers by members of the Dialogue Group which build on the empirical reality and theoretical debates of the exposures and dialogues.

Another less tangible outcome has been an improved understanding of the underlying assumptions and imperatives of neo-classical economists, heterodox economists, as well as other social scientists and practitioners; and a mutual challenge to better understand the relative power to predict labour market behaviour of simpler versus more complex models of labour market structure.

In 2009, Tony Addison (WIDER) assessed the impact of the Exposure Dialogue Programme by comparing the programme to building a bridge across the gap between mainstream economics and other social sciences, and concluded the gap had been narrowed. Read the assessment here. 

The Dialogue Group returned to Durban, South Africa in March 2011 for a reunion visit with their hosts from the 2007 Exposure and to plan an edited volume of the personal reflections and technical notes from all of the exposures and dialogues.

Conference and Volume on Membership-Based Organizations of the Poor

As noted above, the first and most tangible outcome of the Cornell-SEWA-WIEGO Exposure Dialogue Programme was a conference and volume on the role of membership-based organizations of the poor in achieving equitable growth and poverty reduction, an issue that emerged from the first Cornell-SEWA-WIEGO Exposure Dialogue in January 2004. See more information about the conference.  

In January 2005, the Dialogue Group organized a conference on “Membership-Based Organizations of the Poor,” which brought together a group of development analysts and activists to discuss the role of these organizations. The conference was preceded by an exposure to the lives of individual members of SEWA who are involved in the organizing activities of this member-based organization of the poor (MBOP). Selected papers, from a larger set submitted in response to a “call for papers,” were presented at the conference.

Most of the papers presented at the conference were published by Routledge Press in May 2007 in a volume called Membership Based Organizations of the Poor, edited by Marty Chen, Renana Jhabvala, Ravi Kanbur and Carol Richards. In the volume, as at the conference, MBOPs are defined as organizations whose governance structures respond to the needs and aspirations of the poor because they are accountable to their members. MBOPs include such things as trade unions, cooperatives, burial societies, and savings-and-credit groups. The editors of this volume distinguish MBOPs from conventional non-governmental-organizations (NGOs) which, however well-intentioned, operate as outside entities in poor communities.

During 2007, Ravi Kanbur (Cornell University: co-organizer of the Exposure Dialogues) organized launches of the book in Hyderabad, India; Rome, Italy; and Manchester, UK. 

China-India Comparative Labour Markets Research Project

During 2007, in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Sussex and teams of researchers in China and India, WIEGO planned a comparative research project on labour markets and informal employment, including links with poverty and other social outcomes in the two countries.

The first phase of this project involved hosting a team of 16 Chinese researchers and government officials in India in February 2007 so that the two teams could plan the project and the Chinese team could learn what Indian activists, researchers and statisticians have done to organize, study and measure the informal workforce in India. Indian hosts included the Institute of Social Studies Trust, the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector, the National Council of Applied Economic Research, and the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). The 10-day visit concluded with a two-day preliminary research design workshop in New Delhi, during which the participants agreed upon the broad contours of the proposed research project.

Next, a five-day research design workshop was held at Harvard University in April 2007. This was organized by WIEGO with support from Harvard’s Asia Center and Global Equity Initiative. Six members of each country team, as well as six technical advisors, met for three days to plan the research project. They were then joined by academics and practitioners from the Boston area for a two-day research seminar that featured presentations by the research teams and comments by expert discussants. The teams decided on a multi-component project that included:

  • technical consultations and pilot surveys to improve data sources and methods
  • analysis of existing and new national data
  • case studies of selected sub-sectors or occupations in which there are large concentrations of informal workers
  • documentation of good policies and practices
  • exchange visits between activists working with informal workers

See the report on the research design workshop. 

The comparative work continued in May 2007 when two members of the India research team – N.S. Sastry, the former Director General of the National Sample Survey Organization of India, and Jeemol Unni, then Professor at the Gujarat Institute for Development Research and a consultant to the National Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector – visited China. Both individuals are well-known experts on informal economy statistics. This exchange was the first in a series of technical consultations between statisticians and researchers in China and India to improve national data sources and methods in both countries.

Funding for the first component of the project – technical consultations and pilot surveys to improve data sources and methods – was secured in mid-2009. Both country teams have since undertaken city surveys in their respective countries: the Chinese team has undertaken separate surveys of local and migrant residents in six cities; the Indian team has undertaken surveys in two cities. The two country teams, and an International Advisory Committee, met in late August-early September 2010 in Beijing to review preliminary findings and decide on a common tabulation and analysis plan. Joann Vanek (Director, WIEGO Statistics Programme) represents WIEGO on the International Advisory Committee and participated in the Beijing meeting.

For an update on this project and its ouput, please visit the microsite,
Informal Employment, Poverty & Growth in India & China.

 

Past Initiatives

See Past Initiatives