'Intimacy, informalization and intersecting inequalities: tracing the linkages'. (3rd April 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Peterson, V. Spike
• Is Part Of: Labour & industry. Volume 28:Number 2(2018)
• Page Start: 130
• Page End: 145
• Publication Date: 2018-04-03
• Subjects: Informal economy -- racialization -- intersectionality -- state and nation formation -- familial/sexual relations and households; Work -- Periodicals; Industrial relations -- Periodicals; Industrial relations; Work; Periodicals; 331.05
• DOI: 10.1080/10301763.2018.1448966
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1030-1763

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This essay traces linkages among the intimacy of familial household relations, the informalization and market dynamics of capitalist economies, and the intersection of multiple inequalities within and between state/nations. I also explore how informality is not only gendered but inextricably racialized. The latter is rarely addressed, much less integrated, in conventional accounts of informality. Yet it is a particularly urgent consideration in the context of today's between- and within-nation inequalities and their corollary harms, resentments, violence and conflicts. I begin by clarifying the thematic foci of intimacy, informality and intersectionality, and why I foreground them in this essay. I turn next to why state/nations are central features in my account, beginning not in the modern era but millennia ago with the earliest known 'archaic' states and their unprecedented regulation of sexual/familial, 'economic' (property) and membership arrangements. Next follows a discussion of state/nation formation in the tumultuous transition to European modernity and its emerging liberal, capitalist, imperialist and racializing projects. I then review neoliberal economic developments and current conditions of informality, which includes a survey of liberal, marxist and feminist analyses and their policy recommendations. A concluding section draws together key arguments and their implications.