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This paper engages with the translation of technological upgrading into migrant workers’ opportunities for employment and decent work in agriculture, a sector commonly disregarded in the debate about the future of work in an era of automation. Zooming in on migrant workers in Dutch horticulture, it explores how technological innovation in horticulture is connected to the scope and conditions of employment and proposes a heuristic to conceptualise the observed dynamics. Our analysis that reads interview data with actors in the Dutch agri-food sector through the lens of the global value chain (GVC) literature contrasts with the pessimistic prediction of widespread technological unemployment. We find product upgrading, e.g., into high value-added products, and process upgrading, e.g., through climate control in greenhouses, to offer potential for more and secure employment. However, workers’ higher work intensity and the dismantling of entitlements to rest and reproduction in an attempt to ‘make people work like machines’ represent the underbelly of these dynamics

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare and exacerbates the existing insecurities of sex workers, a highly stigmatised, often criminalised and economically precarious group of workers. In the Netherlands, sex workers continue to experience different forms of violence despite the occupation’s legalisation, making it a ‘profession in limbo’. This paper therefore seeks to formulate answers to the questions: What are sex workers’ everyday experiences of (in)security? And: How has the COVID-19 pandemic influenced these? Given sex workers’ historical exclusion from policy formulation, we engage with these questions through collaborative research based on semi-structured interviews with sex workers in The Hague. Our analysis reveals a stark mismatch between the insecurities that sex workers’ experience and the concerns enshrined in the regulatory environment. While the municipality’s regulation of the sex industry focuses on sexually transmitted infections (STIs), occupational safety and health issues that sex workers experience also include psychological problems, insufficient hygiene in the workplace and the risk of violent clients. Besides, income insecurity is a key concern for sex workers. The decline in legal workspaces during the past two decades has not translated into higher service rates. Net earnings are further reduced when window operators pass on the risks of illness or damage to sex workers. Furthermore, operators act as powerful gatekeepers of access to remunerative employment. Here, sex workers identify gender-based discrimination with resulting more severe employment and income insecurities for transwomen and male sex workers. This legal liminality is enabled not only by the opaque legal status of sex work in the Netherlands, but also by the gendering of official regulation. Our study mirrors research from the Netherlands and beyond that documents sex workers’ widespread exclusion from COVID-19 support packages. Over and beyond this, we find that immigration status intersects with and mediates these exclusionary processes. We conclude that, firstly, to effectively address the insecurities that sex workers experience and fear, regulation needs to shift from its current criminal law and public health focus to a labour approach. Secondly, over and above such decriminalization, policies and civil society actors alike need to address the gender and sexual hierarchies that underpin sex worker stigma as well as migrants’ discrimination which have come out as powerful mediators of sex workers’ insecurities.

In this paper, we analyse the gender inclusiveness of Pakistan’s economic growth performance as measured by the rate at which employment changes when GDP increases by one percentage point. Our results show not only differences in such employment elasticities across sectors but also across genders. Rooted in women’s status as secondary workers within Pakistan’s labour force, their employment is commonly more responsive to the business cycle. Surprising results include that gender wage equality is positively associated with employment elasticities. Furthermore, we question the optimistic narrative that education improves women’s ability to take up employment in periods of positive GDP growth.

The Netherlands have ratified a number of international treaties guaranteeing the basic right of all persons to health. Despite this relatively favourable legal situation, undocumented migrant women and men in Dutch cities have been shown to suffer ill-health disproportionately. On the basis of a participatory study conducted with undocumented people themselves, in this policy brief, we highlight steps towards realising health rights of undocumented migrants that can feasibly be implemented in Dutch large cities.

In the context of neo-liberal governance of markets that has often taken place at workers’ expense, in many cases workers have nevertheless struggled successfully to (re-)establish their rights and improve their working conditions. The Forum on “Worker-driven Innovation in the Globalized Economy – Learning from Encounters” that took place at the International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS) from 13-15 June 2016 offered an open space to share, discuss and learn from a diverse and exciting range of such initiatives.

The organization of production in global value chains (GVCs) has been accompanied by a rise of informal and insecure work. Yet, the role of labour agency has received scant attention in the GVC and related literatures. Selwyn (2013) therefore demands to shift attention towards engagement with labour movements to identify what he terms ‘labour-led’ social upgrading. We engage with this plea by investigating the role of voluntary initiatives (VIs) as non-governmental systems of labour regulation in GVCs. The paper asks under which conditions VIs with a more active role for labour emerge in GVCs. In order to answer this question, we apply Wright’s (2000) theory of the factors enabling positive class compromise to a VI that has been implemented in the Indonesian sportswear industry: In June 2011, a Protocol on Freedom of Association (FoA) was signed by Indonesian trade unions, large Indonesian manufacturers and major multinational brands. Based on the analysis of this case, we show that, while the spatial dispersion of production has weakened state mechanisms for the guarantee of labour rights, new pressure points for labour have also emerged, e.g. brands’ reputation or just-in-time production. Besides, new possibilities for transnational labour networks have opened that strengthen workers’ associational power. Moreover, GVCs fragment capital in different factions, such as producers and brands. Their material concerns are not necessarily congruent. Workers’ movements might be able to benefit from such divergent interests. We conclude that if VIs are to create conditions under which decent work can be strengthened, the involvement and strength of local labour organizations is required and producers’ and/or buyers’ dependence on workers’ cooperation may act as a catalyst.

Pakistan’s Vision 2025 connects a policy commitment to greater gender equality with inclusive growth. It prioritises a ‘good quality of life and high living standard for all citizens across regions, gender’ and to ‘achieve an annual average growth rate of 7 to 8 per cent that is inclusive and endogenous’ as its first two objectives (GoP 2014a). These commitments respond to the multiple inequalities and the increasing polarization that characterise the South Asian country. Rather than indicating its economic strength, Pakistan's relatively high average income of current USD 1,290 is a reflection of the multiple inequalities that characterize the South Asian country. This is illustrated, for example, by the high incidence of poverty that paralleled even periods of high growth since the turn of the millennium. Despite international and national commitments, Pakistan is characterized by the most severe extent of gender inequalities in the areas of health, education and labour market participation as well as labour conditions in the South Asian region. While positive economic growth rates are often assumed to go hand in hand with rising employment levels and opportunities for income-earning, growth and indicators of gender equality in Pakistan do not seem to be systematically correlated. This article explores the connection between economic growth performance and gender inequalities in Pakistan. We ask the question how empowering macro-economic growth has been and can be for women in Pakistan. The present paper addresses this question, offering a concise review of related research as well as an exploration of aggregate data on sectoral gendered employment and economic growth. Based on this it formulates tentative policy conclusions and an outlook for further research.

This paper reviews the literature on the portability of social security entitlements for migrant workers, who moved along North-North, South- North, and South-South migration flows. Portability of social security entitlements is the ability of migrant workers to preserve, maintain, and transfer benefits of social security programmes spatially and socially, among their families. The paper uses a gender perspective where possible as part of an intersectional approach. We find that North-North migrants have the best access to social protection and portability, due to generally higher income of migrants, the inter-governmental agreements and developed administrative capacities in the North. There is limited coordination between South/origin and North/destination countries on the portability of social entitlements (such as pensions) of South-North migrants. In general, these migrants are dealing with immigration discourses and discriminatory policies that treat them as second class citizens, even as they are providing much-needed labour to their host countries and contribute to their economy. This hinders bilateral agreements on social security portability. South-South migrants are seeing new regional mechanisms addressing portability. However, beyond legal agreements, many of the impacts of these mechanisms are not yet known. Knowledge gaps in the landscape of research on the portability of social security entitlements for migrant workers that future research should address relate to internal migration and South-South migration, the role of gender and other social identities, migrants' occupations as well as the legality of workers' immigration status.