Metropolitics

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

Reimagining Skill

Nichola Lowe — 2021-10-12T05:00:00Z

Nichola Lowe argues that skill needs to be reimagined, not erased from efforts to strengthen the institutional infrastructure that is needed to deliver better-quality jobs to more workers. Drawing on claims outlined in her recent book, Putting Skill to Work, she presents uncertainty around skill as a generative material for shaping business recovery and growth, allowing worker-supporting institutions to promote changes that result in much better workplaces.
With urban economies rebounding and

- Debates / work, skills, labor markets, employment, jobs, businesses, urban economy

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

Aubervilliers: Portrait of a Working-Class Suburb

Anaïs Albert & translated by Oliver Waine — 2020-02-21T06:00:00Z

The republication of an early-20th‑century realist novel set in the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers brings the industrial towns of the pre-war era back to life—their smells, their health risks, but above all the lives of their inhabitants—offering today's readers a veritable ethnographic immersion into this working-class town.
Although today largely forgotten, except by historians of the working classes, Léon Bonneff was a major figure of social investigation in the early 20th century.

- Reviews / Aubervilliers, Paris, Greater Paris, France, Île-de-France, Paris region, industry, suburbs, banlieue, pollution, health, work, working classes, history, urban history, literature, environment, workers, blue-collar workers, manual workers

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

Projecting Supply and Demand for Middle-Skill Occupations in US States and Metro Areas

James Orr & Ofronama Biu — 2017-10-10T12:34:48Z

Analysts have long noted difficulties in quantifying and projecting skill mismatches in local labor markets. Workforce development providers and community colleges have led the way in responding to this challenge, particularly when it comes to middle-skill jobs, or jobs that require more than a high-school diploma but less than a bachelor's degree. In this article, James Orr and Ofronama Biu probe the methodologies local practitioners use to define middle-skill occupations and to understand the

- From the Field / United States, employment, work, methodology, metropolitan areas, education, training, university, workforce, middle-skill occupations, jobs, qualifications, community college, labor markets

Swept Away: Public Work and the Politics of Employment in New York City's Parks

John Krinsky & Maud Simonet — 2017-09-06T04:36:46Z

Upwards of 4,000 unionized civil-service workers once cleaned and maintained New York City's parks. Today about 1,800 such workers share this task with volunteers, employees of nonprofit organizations on contract with the city, community-service sentencees, and former welfare recipients doing temporary parks work in hopes of obtaining permanent positions. John Krinsky and Maud Simonet trace the evolving political economy of parks work in New York, demonstrating its impact on workers. They also

- From the Field / parks, civil service, green spaces, employment, work, New York, sexual harassment, trade unions, community service, volunteers, workfare

Looking Inward, Across the Border

Harel Shapira — 2016-04-19T05:00:00Z

In the constellation of anti-immigrant politics in the United States, groups like the Minutemen, civilians who patrol the border with military gear, stand out for taking matters into their own hands. Harel Shapira explains that these militiamen are motivated not just by reflexive right-wing anti-immigrant ideology, but also by a nostalgia for their own lost worlds of work and meaning forged in military careers.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has made the construction of a high border

- From the Field / immigration, United States, work, migration, borders, community, Minutemen, patrol, military, nostalgia, Mexico, immigration control, Featured

Reskilling Urban Manufacturing: Workforce Solutions from the Inside Out

Nichola Lowe — 2015-12-15T15:59:35Z

In the United States, a four-year college education has gradually come to be assumed as a prerequisite for entry into the middle class. This is troubling, as more than half the country's working-age population lacks this credential. Rather than being driven exclusively by a “college for all” mentality, argues Nichola Lowe, policymakers should strive for an economy in which social-mobility strategies are also embedded in the workplace, activating internal structures within firms that support and

- Debates / United States, work, public policy, industry, blue-collar workers, education, manufacturing, skills, training

In Cathedrals of Craft: Workplaces for the New Elite Service, Retail, and Manual Labor Jobs

Richard E. Ocejo — 2015-05-12T05:00:00Z

As artisanal economies emerge in postindustrial cities, the symbolic language and craft culture of the industrial city remain strikingly apparent; a prime example of this is the growth, in gentrifying neighborhoods, of high-end bars, barbershops and butcher shops that draw on the romantic imagery of their traditional working-class counterparts. Richard E. Ocejo's exploration of New York City's Chelsea Market highlights the intersection of three 21st‑century urban transformations: shifts in the

- Essays / United States, work, food, retail, New York, food culture, craft work, postindustrialism, cultural omnivores, service sector, artisans, new economy, Featured