“Surplus Humanity” and the Margins of Legality - Chapman University

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24 Chapman Law Review [Vol. 14:1
Liberalization and deregulation of economies have also
accelerated urban occupational marginality, with the result that
those engaged in the informal sector now constitute two-fifths of
the economically active population of the developing countries. 150
―The International Labour Organization estimates that informal
workers comprise over half the workforce in Latin America, over
70 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa and over 80 per cent in
India . . . .‖ 151 Across the global South, mega-slums ―have become
a dumping ground for a surplus population working in unskilled,
unprotected and low-wage informal service industries and
trade.‖ 152 Rural and urban areas are being sutured in production
networks to accelerate siphoning of value. 153 As outsourcing and
flexible production shrink the regulated formal economy, the
informal shadow economy becomes the only hope and source of
livelihood for the urban poor. The explosive expansion of the
unregulated informal sector, with its particular burdens on
women is ―a direct function of liberalization.‖ 154 Over the last
twenty years, both the informal economies and the number of
slum-dwellers have grown exponentially. 155 In India, as in most
of the global South, significant employment growth has resulted
from subcontracting at a global scale and the use of casual or
150 UN-HABITAT, THE CHALLENGE OF SLUMS, supra note 10, at 46, 103–04 (2003).
Note here that many working in the informal sector are a hidden workforce of the formal
economy. Outsourcing and subcontracting networks enable the value created by the
informal sector to be funneled into the profit margins of the formal sector, while any
expectation of ―upward mobility‖ in the informal sector remains a ―myth inspire by
wishful thinking.‖ JAN BREMAN, THE LABOURING POOR IN INDIA: PATTERNS OF
EXPLOITATION, SUBORDINATION, AND EXCLUSION 173–74 (2003).
151 Jan Breman, Myth of the Global Safety Net, 59 NEW LEFT REV. 29, 29 (2009).
152 UN-HABITAT, THE CHALLENGE OF THE SLUMS, supra note 10, at 46. Women make
up ninety percent of the workers in Free Trade Zones, notorious for dismal working
conditions, low wages, and absence of workers‘ rights. Id. at 40; WOMEN‘S EDGE
COALITION, THE EFFECTS OF TRADE LIBERALIZATION ON JAMAICA‘S POOR: AN ANALYSIS OF
AGRICULTURE AND SERVICES 31 (2004). Privatization and erasure of trade barriers led to
widespread deindustrialization and decimation of formal-sector jobs that traditionally
employed men. This has increasingly forced poor women into unregulated and low-paying
informal sector as pieceworkers, vendors, and providers of low-end services. See Caroline
O. N. Moser, Adjustment from Below: Low-Income Women, Time and the Triple Role in
Guayaquil, Ecuador, in ‗VIVA‘: WOMEN AND POPULAR PROTEST IN LATIN AMERICA 173,
180–82 (Sarah A. Radcliffe & Sallie Westwood eds., 1993); Nazneen Kanji, Gender,
Poverty and Economic Adjustment in Harare, Zimbabwe, 7 ENV‘T & URBANIZATION 37, 37,
39, 46–48 (1995).
153 See PETER J. TAYLOR, WORLD CITY NETWORK: A GLOBAL URBAN ANALYSIS 60–61
(2004); John Friedmann, Where We Stand: A Decade of World City Research, in WORLD
CITIES IN A WORLD–SYSTEM 21, 21, 33, 41 (Paul L. Knox & Peter J. Taylor eds., 1995);
Julie Skurski & Fernando Coronil, Country and City in a Postcolonial Landscape: Double
Discourse and the Geo-Politics of Truth in Latin America, in VIEWS BEYOND THE BORDER
COUNTRY: RAYMOND WILLIAMS AND CULTURAL POLITICS 231, 232–33 (Dennis L. Dworkin
& Leslie G. Roman eds., 1993).
154 UN-HABITAT, THE CHALLENGE OF SLUMS, supra note 10, at 40.
155 Id. at 6, 11.