Trade Transport and society 2015.pdf

2018

Sukkur IBA journal of management and business, 2019

A Handbook of Transport Economics, 2011

Scandinavian Economic History Review

The SAGE Handbook of Transport Studies, 2013

Handbook Global History of Work, 2017

Handbook: The Global History of Work, 2017

The global labor history of trade, services, and transport across five centuries necessarily is enormous. Our chapter applies the framework of “mobility” to comprehend how these labor categories function and roots the discussion in specific, geographically dispersed examples. We will establish a general narrative using examples to highlight commonalities as well as variations among workers including: streetcar drivers in Montevideo, saleswomen in Philadelphia, lorry drivers in Ghana, Filipino seamen, street peddlers in Mumbai, and dockers in Durban. Following John Urry, we see “mobility” as the frame for understanding these industries that also connect the local and the global in categories of work central to the system of industrial capitalism (factory work, often unionized and waged) and the “informal” economy. Though the global economy shifted from a mercantile to industrial phase (connected to imperialist expansion), in many parts of the world the transformation of capitalism proved incomplete. The new political and economic realities of the 19th and 20th centuries exposed the inherent inequalities of the global capitalist system in which many millions were exploited. That is, precarious labor is not something new to neoliberal capitalism but, rather, inherent in the capitalist system from its foundational era. In approaching these large categories of work, not only capital but also workers, their cultures, and their organizations are mobile; class formation occurred in these industries, globally, albeit in varied ways considering diverse histories and cultures. “Mobile” work in trade, transport, and services, in fact, were essential mediating categories: moving between the “formal” and “informal” spheres while providing some stability and prosperity (or at least the promise of such) for many, not least outside of western industrial capitalism. Increasingly though, as industrial economies contract, precarious sorts of work have taken on increased significance including in western economies’ trade, services, and transport industries. The framework of mobility helps address critiques of precarity and the structures and experiences of capitalism.