In the big cities of Pakistan, peri-urban dairy production plays an important role for household income generation and the supply of milk and meat to the urban population. On the other hand, milk production in general, and peri-urban dairy production in particular, faces numerous problems that have been well known for decades. Peri-urban dairy producers have been especially neglected by politicians as well as non-government-organizations (NGOs). Against this background, a study in Pakistan’s third largest city, ...

The working paper’s main objective is to explore the extent to which non-compliance to international labor rights is caused by global competition. From the perspective of institutional economics, compliance with core labor rights is beneficial for sustainable development. Nonetheless, violations of these rights occur on a massive scale. The violators usually blame competitive pressures. A number of studies have come to the conclusion that non-compliance does not provide for a competitive edge, thereby denying ...

In recent decades there has been a transformation of two central concepts of modernity – labour and the household. Ela Bhatt – the founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association of India (SEWA), has made an important contribution to this transformation. Through the emergence of unions such as SEWA, the notion of who represents labour is being broadened; the marginalised are finding an institutional voice. Increasingly, the household is being recognised as a site of both production and reproduction. SEWA is ...

This paper explores the relationship between migrant leaders and labour rights activists starting with the acknowledgment that this is often a source of frustration for all subjects involved. The collaboration between organisations of migrants and those of workers is not always smooth and truly collaborative, yet foreign workers have an increasing importance in the negotiation of better labour rights in Europe. The topic is discussed by taking the case of migrant domestic labour in Italy and the experience ...

Since the uprisings in Northern Africa and Arab regions, the global Occupy-movements and mass strikes in Southern Europe, protest and resistance have become again a much-debated topic. However, Germany seems to be rather untouched by such rebellious acts. Of course, it has not been subjected to the harsh austerity measures of “crisis management”, but neoliberal policies are for a long time at work here as well - widening the contradictions between social integrity, democracy and subjective wellbeing on the one side ...

Long before the economic crisis in Greece, its labor movement had been already in a crisis itself. Indicators of the crisis of trade unions are seen in low union density in the private sector, lack of union representation at the workplace level and the representation gap considering young, female, immigrant and precarious workers. The trade union bureaucracy is dominated by public sector unions and led by party-factions. Inner cohesion of the labor movement is shattered by the organizational divisions of public and ...