Migrant remittances and the web of family obligations: Ongoing support among spatially extended kin in North-east Thailand, 1984–94

Exchanges of money, goods, and assistance among family/kin members are influenced by the intertwined lives of individuals and their family/kin. As people pass through the young adulthood years, acquiring obligations as spouses and parents, and migrating in search of economic opportunities, tensions can arise over existing obligations. Using rich longitudinal data from Northeast Thailand, we examined the role of family networks (origin and destination) on migrants’ exchanges with family/kin. Our approach overcame many shortcomings of earlier studies, allowing us to 'see' the family social network arrayed in a broader network. We show that intra-family exchanges are influenced by marital status, the presence of children, having parents in the origin household, and having siblings depart from it. The results are stable across sensitivity tests that systematically include or exclude various familial links. And reports provided by origin households on migrant remittances are consistent with reports from migrants themselves

Workers Management and the Organization of Work

In this talk I want to examine the organization of work in two recuperated enterprises in Argentina. The latter refers to a group of enterprises that have been appropriated by their workers and are run as self-managed cooperatives. There are about 200 of them, employing around 10,000. Some of these enterprises are doing very well and some are just generating barely the necessary to cover costs. Some have acquired the property of the business, in general through a process of expropriation that operates on a logic parallel to that of eminent domain, and most operate on a legal limbo where workers have the de facto control of the place but not the de jure ownership.

The Recuperation of Enterprises: Defending Workers’ Lifeworld, Creating New Tools of Contention

Abstract: In the last decade a unique form of struggle developed in Argentina: the appropriationof bankrupt enterprises by their workers. This article combines several sourcesof data to explain the emergence and development of this practice and its effects onArgentine labor politics. We argue that the recuperation of enterprises is the result ofworkers? contingent responses to a deep social crisis, the emergence of organizations thatpromoted this practice, and the presence of a class culture in which wage work is considereda dignifi ed form of work. Furthermore, we argue that the recuperation of enterprisesis now part of the repertoire of contention of Argentine workers.Fil: Itzigsohn, Jose Ezequiel. University Brown; Estados UnidosFil: Rebón, Julián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Worker-Centered Design + The Critical Social Sciences

The workplace is a center of creative making and a critical space for exploitation, surveillance and control. Designers are workers. Workers could potentially be designers. Workplaces and the broader economy could potentially be subject to social design. Yet, the relationship between design, work and the potential for a worker-centered design is veiled. In this panel, we discuss the designer as worker, the worker in design. We discuss the hidden histories of workers functioning as designers of co-operative and self organizing institutions and we consider the room for more co-operative and participatory working futures