Metropolitics

Visible Minorities, Visible Risk: Toronto's Unequal Eviction Burden

Prentiss Dantzler & Khalil Martin & Abigail Meza — 2025-09-16T05:00:00Z

In Toronto, who gets evicted isn't random—it follows the city's racial and economic divides. Canada's data practices hide crucial details about who is most at risk.
Evictions are a leading cause of housing insecurity in cities worldwide, disproportionately affecting lower-income households and non-white racialized groups. In Canada, although attention to evictions is growing, there is limited research available. As the most populous city in the country, Toronto is home to a diverse set of

- Essays / evictions, social class, poverty, housing, tenants, rental, rental housing, minorities, precarity, Canada, Toronto

Navigating Jefes Fantasmas in New York City's Urban Platform Economy

Jackson Todd — 2023-03-03T06:00:00Z

How has the “platform economy” altered urban life, infrastructure, and labor? Jackson Todd examines New York City's deliveristas and the coercive practices employed by food delivery applications. What is the future of labor rights in the new economy?
The logistics of the so-called platform economy have reshaped our cities and communities. Urbanites can now get everything from groceries, toiletries and pet supplies to prescription medications, flowers and fast food delivered to their doors in

- Essays / work, labor, tech economy, tech sector, new economy, precarity, New York, United States, trade unions, food

Double Jeopardy for Single-Parent Families: When Housing Conditions and Lockdown Collide

Laure Crepin & Fanny Bugeja-Bloch & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-11-05T06:00:00Z

Single-parent families are among those households most affected by economic precarity and the current health crisis. In this paper, Laure Crepin and Fanny Bugeja-Bloch show that, in France, housing conditions for these families have been in decline since the early 2000s—long before the Covid lockdowns.
School closures and the shutdown of most shops and businesses, exhortations to work from home, short-time working (which has affected one in three private-sector employees in France), limits on

- From the Field / family, Covid-19, France, precarity, housing, coronavirus, inequalities, lockdown

Between Two Crises: New York's Artisanal Food Startup Founders

Nga Than — 2021-09-28T05:00:00Z

The Covid‑19 pandemic forced a pause to a decade of growth for New York City's artisanal food startups. Strategies employed by their founders reveal the precarity of their circumstances and the importance of support from city government.
---- Series: New York Dossier: The Food Industry Faces the Covid‑19 Pandemic Food startups—small-scale artisanal food preparation enterprises—have proliferated in many global cities since the 2007–2008 financial crisis. In New York City, food manufacturing

- From the Field / food industry, food culture, food, artisans, start-ups, businesses, manufacturing, precarity, Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, United States, New York

Understanding Why Homeless People Refuse Emergency Accommodation

Édouard Gardella & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-03-09T06:00:00Z

The refusal of emergency accommodation by many homeless people expresses the intensity of their attachment to the communities to which they belong. While this attachment to the street or to their neighborhood exposes them to extreme precarity, it also reflects a need among homeless people for recognition and a certain rootedness.
If people sleep on the streets, it is because they have chosen to do so. This is what Sylvain Maillard, a French member of parliament from the ruling LREM party,

- From the Field / exclusion, homelessness, precarity, emergency accommodation, poverty

Cleaning and Care Worker Cooperatives in NYC: Empowerment Through Collectivization of Labor

Nora Komposch — 2020-12-08T06:00:00Z

Worker cooperatives have been shown to reduce precariousness and economic exclusion of marginalized groups. However, while much is known about the worker cooperatives' economic impact on workers' lives, other social effects, such as the empowerment of individuals in their everyday lives, remain less explored. This article contributes to filling this gap by examining the empowerment process of migrant women in their everyday lives after joining a cleaning or care worker cooperative in New York

- From the Field / community organizing, women, migrant workers, work, worker cooperatives, United States, New York, empowerment, precarity

Poverty as a Social Stigma

Axelle Brodiez-Dolino & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-12-13T06:00:00Z

The distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor is deeply entrenched, and representations of poverty have long been burdened with their share of prejudices and stigmas. Historian Axelle Brodiez-Dolino brings into perspective the changing social boundaries, categories and policies that have constructed, deconstructed and sought to tackle poverty.
Society—whether Christian or secularized, monarchical or republican—has always been, and remains, the product of interaction among

- Essays / urban poor, poverty, precarity, vulnerability, assistance, welfare state, stigma

Rio de Janeiro: Storms, Militia, and Urban Development

Leandro Benmergui & Rafael Soares Gonçalves & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-11-08T06:00:00Z

The dramatic consequences of storms at the beginning of 2019 in a favela in Rio de Janeiro reveal the ongoing evolution of informal urbanization in the city. The development of militias, as a result of security problems and the withdrawal of public authorities in these neighborhoods, also affects building construction. Leandro Benmergui and Rafael Soares Gonçalves highlight the dangers of these developments.
At the beginning of 2019, in Rio de Janeiro, two violent storms caused a significant

- From the Field / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, favela, militias, informal housing, vulnerable housing, informality, precarity, catastrophe, disaster, Latin America, safety

Open-Air Auto Shops: Subsistence Jobs in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Collectif Rosa Bonheur & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-10-25T04:00:00Z

The informal activities of street mechanics observed by Collectif Rosa Bonheur in northern France attest to a much larger subsistence economy at the margins of employment. According to this research collective, the spatial anchoring of these activities, on the borderline of informality, invites us to consider spaces that are often perceived as peripheral and relegated as “working-class centralities.”
In the vicinity of houses, in garages adjacent to dwellings, on sidewalks, in public squares

- From the Field / cars, poverty, precarity, Roubaix, Lille, Hauts-de-France, Northern France, France, working classes, working-class neighborhoods, informality, work, jobs, employment, Nord–Pas-de-Calais

Immigrant Men and Voluntary Work in a Swiss City

Agnès Aubry — 2018-05-15T05:00:00Z

Across Europe, refugees and immigrants find themselves in uncertain civil and legal territory; precariousness infuses every aspect of their daily existence. In this paper, Agnes Aubry elucidates the multiple meanings of immigrants' voluntary work in a soup kitchen, demonstrating the legal, moral, and sociological connections between labor and citizenship.
Saturday evening, in a warehouse near the heart of a city in Switzerland.
It's 8 p.m. at the soup kitchen. Abdel, myself and 13 other

- From the Field / immigration, refugees, migration, Switzerland, citizenship, precarity, migrants, voluntary work, volunteering, civic sector