No Cushion to Fall Back on: the Global Economic Crisis and Informal Workers
- Document number
- 2280
- Date
- 2009
- Title
- No Cushion to Fall Back on: the Global Economic Crisis and Informal Workers
- Author/publisher
- Zoe Elena Horn
- Availability
- View/save PDF version of this document
- Document type(s)
- Research/Study/Analysis,
- Keywords
- Migrant rights; Migration management; Comprehensive approach to migration; Migration policy; Restrictive migration measures, Irregular Migration, Feminization of migration, Economic migration, Labour migration, Free movement, Undocumented migrants; Undocumented labour;
- Summary
- The evidence strongly suggests that the global recession is pushing informal workers and their families further into impoverishment. This study thus highlights that the crisis has hit the world's working poor particularly hard and that it may have longer lasting effects on informal workers than on those employed in the formal sector. Informal workers had a range of suggestions for action by government, non-governmental organisations, and local associations of informal workers to alleviate the effects of the crisis and improve their overall situation, and these are reflected in the report. Worker recommendations include emergency measures like soup kitchens but also a moratorium on state actions - like evictions - that make their livelihoods even more vulnerable. They also made suggestions for systemic change like greater legal recognition and protection for informal workers. Informal workers participating in the study emphasised the need to act quickly.
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