The document discusses supporting transitions for the poor in the context of demographic shifts, climate change, urbanization and globalization. It focuses on jobs, migration and women and girls. Current approaches to supporting rural livelihoods and regulating informal work are outlined as inadequate. Needed responses include recognizing multilocality and mobility drivers, supporting informal settlements and enterprises, improving labor standards, and recognizing agency despite risks for women and girls in occupations like domestic work and sex work. Better data, regulation of intermediaries, and support for mobility and multiple livelihood strategies are key entry points.

1. SUPPORTING THE TRANSITION
Priya Deshingkar
University of Sussex

2. OBJECTIVES
 To help DFID and donor community to support
the poor in the process of transition more
holistically
 To identify the implications of current
livelihood patterns for key development
sectors.
 The focus on the session is on Jobs, Migration
and Women and Girls

3. ROADMAP OF THE PRESENTATION
 Emerging patterns in work in the context of
demographic shifts, climate change,
urbanisation and globalised markets with a
focus on women and girls
 A discussion of conventional responses and
their shortcomings
 Discussion of responses that are needed and
key entry points for intervention
 Implications for different sectors and how
DFID advisers can best support the process of
change

4. JOBS IN THE CONTEXT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, POPULATION
GROWTH, URBANISATION and GLOBALISATION
Current Situation Conventional Approaches
/Responses
 More pressure on land and/or greater risks
in agriculture
 Better endowed, migrate or diversify
 Others are trapped – not enough capital to
migrate or diversify
 Attractive opportunities in
 towns and cities (construction, domestic
work, sex work, services, trade);
 export manufacturing (garments, shoes);
 plantations and high value crops
(horticulture, cotton)
 Casualisation, fragmentation, layers of
intermediaries, piece rate work, high risk,
lack of protection or unionisation,
 Child Labour endemic in less visible low
paid occupations
 Stretched households and circular
migration
 First point of entry for poor migrants in
urban areas - slums
 Migrants Remittances – internal smaller
but flow to more and poorer households
 Social Protection for the most vulnerable populations
 Support rural development and diversification
through technology, microfinance, NRM
 Decent Work directives but without a realistic
strategy
 Assumptions that a lack of employment opportunities
and the limited prospects of working one’s way out of
poverty “push” people to urban areas.
 However urban labour markets may be saturated or
stagnant and many end up in precarious and
degrading employment
 Many arrive to and remain in slums and informal
sector jobs which are a manifestation of this
incomplete transition
 informal sector – characterised as dead-end with
limited or no prospects for exits from poverty
 Much of today’s urban poverty is simply yesterday’s
rural poverty displaced
 Rural employment creation programmes
 Discourage distress migration, directly or indirectly –
81% governments in SSA have negative attitudes

5. THE TRANSITION IN GHANA
 Ghana -population of 25 million, 28% below the poverty line. Agriculture - 30%
of GDP, employs 56% of the labour force.
 North of the country is relatively poor and North-South disparities appear to
have widened. Although livelihoods in the North are highly diversified locally
(Dietz et al 2013) migration to other areas is on the increase to access work
elsewhere e.g. in plantations, the urban informal sector
 The Migrating out of Poverty Survey covering 1200 rural households in five
regions of northern and central Ghana shows migration is mainly within the
country to rural and urban destinations and occurs for a number of economic
and non-economic reasons including youth aspirations and escape from
restrictive cultural norms.
 For many men migrating to cities their first point of entry is a slum. Research in
two slums in Accra, Old Fadama and Nima shows that most work in the
informal sector and remit money home which is used for consumption, housing
and education.
 On the other hand thousands of “kayayei” or poor female porters do
not even have the security of a slum dwelling and sleep rough Many of
these are widowed, separated or unmarried girls and women who feel
the city offers them a better future than remaining in the village.

6. GHANA contd.
 But such migration is fraught with risk – sickness, threat of eviction and
injury which compromises its beneficial impacts. For those who sleep
rough there is the added risk of sexual abuse and theft
 Many of these risks arise from a lack of acceptance and support for poor
people’s choices and their livelihood activities.
 Policy responses to rural-urban migration are negative with no efforts to
provide low-cost housing, access to credit or healthcare.
 Kayayei migration is viewed as trafficking and the response is to try and
stop it
 Ghana is now on its second Decent Work Programme (2011-2015) but
improved labour standards are not visible small enterprise in slums
 Recent reports indicate that cash transfer projects are in arrears and
youth employment programmes have suffered from misappropriation
(Ghana Web Aug 2013)

7. E-waste
recycling
Old Fadama
Food stall

8. RURAL AND URBAN LIVELIHOODS IN INDIA
 Sharp regional inequalities persist. Employment patterns shaped by a combination
of historical patron-client relationships and emerging opportunities.
 For example parts of tribal Rajasthan are known for high rates of child labour in
agriculture
 In Odisha entire families of adivasis work for part of the year in brick kilns
 Dalits in rural Bihar have a history of migrating to Punjab for work in irrigated farms
 In rural Andhra Pradesh, groups of poor labourers are recruited by “mestris” to work
on construction sites.
 Many of these occupations have been characterised as neo-bondage by structuralists
because recruitment agents and contractors play an important role in enabling
access to labour markets but also in determining the conditions of work and limiting
personal freedom.
 Workers are recruited against advances either at source or destination. The advances
help migrants to smooth consumption, repay debts, spend on weddings and health.
 Policy approaches to regulate agents and provide protection to poor construction
workers in countries such as India are weak and poorly implemented. E.g. millions of
rupees in unpaid CESS (Deshingkar 2009)
 Little recognition of the poverty reducing potential of such employment. Growing
evidence that such employment can put workers on an upward trajectory even if it is
not a fast exit from poverty

9. JOBS IN THE CONTEXT OF CLIMATE CHANGE,
POPULATION Urren GROWTH AND URBANISATION
What Needs To Be Done
Entry Points
t situation
 Recognise and support the
multilocality of livelihoods
 Recognise the complexity of drivers of
mobility – youth aspirations, escaping
political and social persecution (recent
research in Ethiopia, Tz, Kenya and
Malawi)
 Recognise and support enterprise in
informal settlements
 Recognise transformative potential of
informal sector jobs and remittances
from poor migrants
 Create conditions for productive use of
remittances in rural areas
 Better equip people, esp youth to
migrate – better/current job
information, vocational training
 Provide resources and incentives that
can support multiple livelihood choices,
not just agr
 Provide support at destination –
improve access to low-cost housing,
healthcare, portability of rights
 Improve labour standards in the
informal sector through collaborative
work with CSOs to
 regulate intermediaries,
 improve transparency
 Improve access to saving and
remittance schemes especially for
youth (15-24 years)

10. What about women and girls?
Current situation Conventional Responses/Approaches
 More women and girls in work as
traditional occupations for men
erode
 Social norms and low levels of
education limit job prospects in rural
areas to low paid, home-based work,
petty trade and farm labour
 Better paid but risky jobs emerging
in urban areas for poor and poorly
educated women and girls e.g. sex
work
 Jobs more attractive than rural work
where women may earn half as
much as men
 Market intermediaries and agents
enable access to such markets but
scope for exploitation and abuse
 Data a big problem as occupations
less visible and part-time
 Improve understanding of
gendered work patterns and
disadvantages faced by women
 Target sectors such as domestic
work and sex work where
women and girls are often
victims of exploitation and abuse
 Stop the trafficking of women
and girls and regulate market
intermediaries
 Stop child labour
 Implement decent work
standards

11. Migrant Domestic Workers from
Indonesia in Singapore
 Indonesia is one of the largest suppliers of female migrants in domestic
work.
 By 2006 2.7 million Indonesians were working overseas and a majority
were females with little or no education.
 Research in Singapore under the Migrating out of Poverty Consortium
shows that despite the precarious and unregulated nature of
recruitment and employment processes, with employers and agents
exercising a great deal of power over workers, 66 per cent of the
migrants in the sample of 201 said that remittances had contributed to
the education of their children.
 Other productive and livelihood enhancing use of remittances, such as
investing in land and housing (39%), health (10%), enterprise (9%) and
debt repayment (3%) were also reported in addition to improved
consumption being reported 73% of respondents.
 However, the impacts of such migration on poverty would be
significantly faster and greater if the industry could be better regulated

12. Women and Girls
What Needs To Be Done Entry Points
 Recognise the hazy
boundaries between
forced and voluntary work
 Recognise agency in
women and girls’ decisions
to enter certain types of
work such as sex work and
domestic work
 Recognise the facilitative
role played by agents in
enabling those without
resources to access other
labour markets – here too
improve regulation
 Improve data on less
visible and part-time
occupations –
 Move away from controlling
occupations such as domestic work
and sex work but improve action to
prevent exploitation and abuse
through
 better regulation of agents and
employers in collaboration with
watch dogs
 Education of girls and women on risks
and rights
 Improve data collection on
women’s occupations through
collaboration between data
agencies and those who work at
the grass roots level

13. RURAL URBAN
People, resources, ideas
FORMAL/
REGULATED
UNREGULATED/
UNDOCUMENTED
Livestock
Traditiona
l Farming
Trade
Manufacturing
Commerical
Farming
Trade and
Services
(Electricians,
Plumbers,
shops)
Wage
Labour
Formal
employment
Trade
Industry
Nonfarm
labour (e.g.
construction)
Sex
Work
Domestic
Work
Access to
credit
Improve awareness of rights,
recognise agency, support
people’s choices
Brokers
Agents and
Brokers
Reduce opportunities
for exploitation but
recognise facilitative
role

14. THANK YOU