From Hands-On to High-Tech: How Dutch Care Workers Navigate Digitalization and Robotization

By ISS Blog Bliss 4 November 2025 699 views

Whether we embrace it or not, digital technologies and AI are here to stay, and they are fundamentally changing the human world of labour. As new technologies revolutionize the healthcare landscape, these changes are reshaping the lives and work of care workers. In this blog, Sreerekha Sathi shares insights from her research, which explores important questions about how digital technologies are reshaping care work in the Netherlands specifically: how these innovations are affecting care workers and how care homes are adapting to digital solutions and AI-assisted robotics. What specific forms of AI-assisted robotics are currently being utilized in Dutch care homes and how can we evaluate the benefits, challenges and risks associated with their implementation?

Digitalization, robotization and the care worker

The Dutch healthcare sector faces increasing inequality in access to care, staff shortages, increasing workloads and a high percentage of aging populations. Around two thousand government-funded care homes serve the elderly, those with dementia, disabilities and other care needs.

Like other countries in Europe, the Netherlands has been experimenting with digitization and robotization in health care. Over the past two decades, AI-assisted digital tools and Socially Assistive Robots (SARS) have become more common in surgeries, patient monitoring, consultations, diagnostics, rehabilitation, telemedicine, cognitive and emotional care, especially in the post-pandemic period (Getson, C., & Nejat, G. 2021, Kang et al. 2023). Beyond Europe, countries like China and Japan lead these developments, with Sweden and the Netherlands close behind.

The use of digital solutions and AI-assisted robotics have moved beyond the experimental phase into early adoption. Current discussion focuses on opportunities for collaboration between private companies, academic institutions and healthcare providers. This pilot study involved conversations with few care workers in the care homes, innovation managers, company officials and academic scholars in the Netherlands.

Conversations with care workers show that most technologies in use are still relatively simple – medication dispensers, sensor systems and communication tablets – selected for their affordability and ease. Once prescribed, digital care tools like Compaan, Freestyle Libre, MelioTherm, Medido, Sansara or Mono Medical are introduced to clients by neighbourhood digital teams, usually via smartphone apps connected through WIFI as part of online digital care.

The introduction of robots is slowly gaining ground. Many universities, including Erasmus University, are collaborating with private companies on new projects in robotization and digitalization in health care. Some of the robots which are popular in use currently in Europe include TinyBots (Tessa), Zorabots (NAO), Pepper, Paro and other robotic pets, and SARA, which supports dementia patients. Some care workers believe that the robots promote social contact and enhance patients’ independence, while others appreciate that robots taking over peripheral tasks can make their own work easier.

Care workers are required to learn and engage with new technologies, which directly affect their everyday lives. Although they are relatively well paid by normal standards, their workload and stress often exceed what their pay reflects. Larger, well-funded care homes have support staff who assist care workers for indirect or non-medical support at lower pay. When new technologies are introduced without sufficient involvement and inputs from the workers, they can lead to more burden on workers in terms of time and labour costs. For them, new technologies are often ‘thrown over the fence’, with insufficient training or involvement of care workers in design or decision-making, leading to frustration, resistance and underuse even when the tools are effective. They argue, ‘we don’t need fancy tools – just the right tools used in the right way.’

Many workers feel that if a robot can take on physical tasks, the workers can give clients more time and attention. When the purpose of a tool is clearly explained, and workers remain present in critical moments, clients and families are more accepting of new technology.

Gender and labour in new technologies

Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) has long shown how technologies carry gendered biases. Feminist histories of computing have highlighted women’s contribution to the invention and introduction of computers and software (Browne, Stephen & McInerney, 2023). A relevant question to explore today is would new technologies using AI assisted robotics replicate the same biases. Although new technologies are often presented as objective, they are built upon datasets and assumptions that can reproduce biases and stereotypes, based on the foundations of the feeds and accesses in-built into it (1). Robots, for instance, often reflect the idealized gendered traits. Nurse robots are designed with feminine or childlike features – extroverted and friendly – versus ‘techno-police’ styled introvert security robots as stoic and masculine.

Care work remains a heavily gendered profession, though more men are joining the field. While some men care workers face occasional client push back, they are increasingly welcomed amid shortages. Many care workers worry about being replaced by robots, yet most agree that emotional presence of caregivers – especially in elderly and dementia care – remains essential and robots may support but cannot substitute the human connection that defines good care work.

Further, workers also stress that technology must be context-sensitive: its success depends on the socio-economic profile of the area, staff availability and the lived preferences of the people receiving care. They advocate for flexible, context-based implementation rather than top-down standardization of new machines. Core to the debates on digitalization and robotization in care are ethical issues often narrowly framed as privacy concerns but extending to autonomy, emotional dignity and growing surveillance and inequality.

Insights into the future

The study observe that many attempts to introduce digital technologies or robotics in care homes stall in the pilot phase, often disliked or abandoned by care professionals or clients. Care workers need time and training to trust these devices, especially regarding the risks and uncertainties involved. They emphasize early involvement through co-design as essential for building trust, transparency and accountability. For sustainable implementation, the focus should shift from what is ‘new’ to what is ‘useful’.

Future debates will likely centre around prioritizing digitization in health care versus SARs in physical care. Persistent challenges include time constraints to software failures (Huisman & Kort 2019). As efforts to create ‘smart homes’ and support independent living continue (Allaban, Wang & Padir 2020), environmental sustainability and climate resilience must become priorities.

Another important step for exploration is to critically analyze the growing corporatization and monopolization in digitization and robotization (Zuboff, 2019; Hao, 2025). Rather than leaving healthcare innovations to monopolies or private capital, public or community-based state welfare support must retain agency in how digital and robotic tools are implemented. Finally, pushing back from military robotics towards socially beneficial technologies – such as health care or waste management – needs to be prioritized.

As a work in progress, this research is significant for understanding the social impacts of digitalization and robotization. In the next step of this study, these conversations will further bring together care workers, academics and innovative managers between the global south and the global north to foster dialogue about how these changes are reshaping the healthcare economy, care homes and the future of care workers.

End Note:

A focus on changing forms of labour, along with the concerns around gender stereotypes and gendered knowledges attributed to social robots, is important for further exploration in the fields of AI-assisted occupations. The introduction of new machines involves the invisible human labour behind them, which is mostly the ‘ghost workers’ from the global south, whether with data work, coding or mining. What is inherent to existing social contexts, including gender, class, and racial stereotypes, are already heavily compromising the digital world.

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by a small grant from Erasmus Trustfonds for 2024-2025, I embarked on this short study to explore these questions. Although the grant period concluded in June 2025, the research continues. I would like to thank Ms. Julia van Stenis for her invaluable support in making this study possible.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question

About the author:

Sreerekha Sathi works on issues of gender, political economy, and critical development studies. Her current research explores the intersections of gender, care, and labour with digitalization, AI, and the future of work, and engages with critical debates in decolonial thought. She is a member of the editorial board of Development and Change.

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The politics of land: Introducing an important new collection

By ISS Blog Bliss 25 September 2025 536 views

Land lies at the heart of contemporary politics. As a site of contestation and negotiation, land is central to struggles that affect us all. The Oxford Handbook of Land Politics , edited by ISS Professor Jun Borras and Jennifer Franco, brings together contributions from leading scholars in critical agrarian studies, offering an invaluable guide to these debates. In this blog, Ian Scoones reflects on the book and its timely contributions.

Land is central to contemporary debates about politics. Land sustains the livelihoods of millions through farming, livestock keeping, hunting and collecting. Such livelihoods are intimately bound up with nature, and the complex and diverse ecosystems that thrive on land. Land creates a sense of identity refracted through gender, race, class and other axes of difference. Through diverse institutions and forms of authority, land connects citizens and states, corporations and capital, and is the locus of accumulation, extraction and control. Access to land is thus contested, negotiated and claimed through multiple, competing actors, linked to a myriad of struggles. Land, in other words, connects us all through its politics. This is why the newly-published Oxford Handbook of Land Politics is so important. Across 38 chapters (880 pages), written by a veritable who’s who of the broad field of critical agrarian studies, the book offers an invaluable guide to these debates, with a stellar overview and introduction. from its editors, Jun Borras and Jenny Franco. What follows are some reflections taken from the Foreword that I wrote.

At the end of the Foreword, I ask, what are the new axes of debate, transforming our understandings of agrarian change and politics of land offered in the pages of the Handbook? There are many, but I highlight just four.

First is the move from seeing land as only a site of production and so accumulation, but also social reproduction, and the locus of highly gendered social and cultural relations. This suggests a much more diverse land politics going beyond class to gender, race, identity and so on. It in turn suggests a renewed focus on labour, with complex livelihoods generated from multiple sources beyond the fixed plot of land, through migration, trade and so on. The classic categories of land-based classes centred only on production are thus unsettled as new forms of livelihood are created. As a result, the dynamics of differentiation and accumulation shifts, with land politics changing as a wider appreciation emerges of Henry Bernstein’s classic questions of agrarian political economy – who owns what, who does what, who gets what and what they do with it?
Second, the centring of nature, environment and climate in relation to land is a theme that resonates across many chapters. Humans and nature (and so land) are inseparable yet have often become disconnected by the forces of capitalist modernity. The importance of reconnecting is central, requiring a new political ecology/economy of land. This has deep implications for how we see land; again not just as a demarcated plot, but as part of a wider living landscape and territory, within a broader planetary system. This in turn highlights the crucial connection between land and the climate crisis. Changing land use, whether through deforestation, intensive agriculture and extraction of water or minerals is a major contributor to climate change. As the regimes of extraction evolve under new frontiers of capitalism, land is central. Such regimes of food, water and energy are constituted through a contested politics and, as the imperative to switch from fossil fuel dependence and intensive, polluting systems of agriculture accelerates, new challenges emerge. In the rush to ‘net zero’, for example, alternative energy, climate adaptation and nature-based ‘solutions’ are offered, yet all these have implications for who controls the land, with land grabs increasingly justified in the name of green and climate ‘transitions’, which in turn create new land-based politics across the world.
Third, many chapters argue for going beyond a narrow, individualised approach to land rights, tenure security and land governance. This managerial, administrative and technocratic frame dominates policy thinking but is incompatible with the realities on the ground. As the introduction points out, such efforts to provide ‘security’ for women, Indigenous peoples and others can paradoxically lead to opportunities for dispossession, as speculation, appropriation and extraction increase in areas where ‘regularisation’ has generated legibility through demarcation and delimitation. Instead, there is a need to think about land as constituted through hybrid, mosaic forms of property relation, with property-making as a continuous, contested and negotiated process. Land is always embedded in power relations and so thinking about how authority over land is generated – through interactions between citizens, states, corporations and other actors – can help us elaborate more appropriate democratic institutions for land control and a more innovative, grounded approach to ‘land governance’.
Finally, the Handbook points to the importance of understanding land as a ‘regime’, situated in a wider historical political economy context. As the introduction highlights, a land regime – just as a food regime – is stabilised, perhaps only tentatively and temporarily, by a set of political-economic forces that operate within a particular phase of capitalism. But regimes change due to the intersection of local struggles and wider political forces and interests. Today these are influenced by new frontiers of extraction and accumulation, linked to globalised economic relations, changing food systems and heightening climate-environment imperatives. Meanwhile, authoritarian, populist regimes define the nation in terms of the relationship between ‘the people’ and their mother/fatherland, always in ways that act to exclude some, while incorporating others in a populist politics of land and belonging. Until we understand this wider historically situated, structural context, the attempts to address the pressing challenges of land and its use at more local levels – whether through moves to agroecology or food sovereignty, for example – will remain elusive.

The Handbook is a rich, diverse and deeply informed collection, mixing theoretical perspectives and grounded reflections. By going beyond a narrow Marxist canon to encompass a wide array of perspectives, no particular line is taken. The introduction encourages readers to find their own way, to read across conceptual framings and reflect on different dimensions – in other words to generate a critical sensibility to agrarian studies and land politics.

For any student of land, or indeed politics more generally, as well as activists and practitioners grappling with the challenges of land politics, this Handbook is an enormously valuable and vital resource.

Note: There are two publication dates mentioned on the website of the Handbook: 2022 was the year when the Handbook project formally got started; 2025 was when the Handbook was actually completed and published as a whole.

This blog was first published by Transnational Institute

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Ian Scoones is a professor in the Resource Politics and Environmental Change cluster. He was co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre at Sussex (2006-21) and the principal investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant project, PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Lessons From the Margins, (2018-2023).

Rain or shine, the gig must go on – Platform workers navigate climate extremes

By ISS Blog Bliss 29 October 202431 October 2024 2051 views

Precariousness is an underlying factor in the gig economy. When combined with the climate crisis, this becomes an even bigger burden on gig workers. These ‘flexible workers’ are often not equipped to be flexible to the changing environment. They face the dilemma of navigating between algorithms and climate extremes, often forced to choose earnings over health. In this blog, Anna Elias explores how the vulnerabilities of the workers are amplified in the context of climate crisis.

‘Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature.’ Naomi Klein (This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate).

Most parts of India suffered from extreme weather conditions this year. While the temperatures soared up to 50℃ in some cities, the monsoons that followed caused extreme havoc in others. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) report predicts that India will lose 5.8 per cent of its working hours by 2030 due to extreme heat. What does this mean for a gig worker, for most of whom the city is their workspace, and for whom navigating the city constitutes a substantial part of their everyday life?

App based platforms have revolutionized the way urban dwellers travel, eat and purchase. While the gig economy has created numerous flexible jobs, it is also criticised for not effectively dealing with various issues such as workers’ wellbeing and social protection.

Flexible workers are not equipped to be flexible to the changing environment. In current research and policy discourses on gig work, the impact of climate change on the worker is often overlooked. While climate change has significant consequences to both their lives and livelihoods, it is only one among the many vulnerabilities they face. Gig workers already suffer from casualised, low-paid working conditions without access to long-term security, formal social protections and welfare. The pressure caused by these precarious conditions is further exemplified by extreme weather events. Beyond the immediate physical dangers posed by heatwaves or flash floods, these conditions increase the susceptibility of road accidents, thereby heightening the risk of traffic-related injuries.

As research has shown, in the gig economy, climate change is poised to act as a ‘wicked multiplier’ intensifying the vulnerabilities experienced by workers in developing countries. Gig workers in these countries are exposed to extreme weather conditions and endure long hours while navigating hazardous roads and traffic during heatwaves, storms, and floods. Those using two-wheelers to get around face additional challenges such as dust inhalation, impaired vision due to harsh sunlight, heatstroke, and the lack of shade on the roads. These conditions, along with algorithmic management and the promise of ‘lightning fast’ services, make gig workers vulnerable to exhaustion, dehydration, and severe health risks. That their earnings are dependent on the satisfactory execution of the gig exacerbates the precariousness of their situation.

Amidst this crisis, the responses from app-based companies are noteworthy. A prominent Indian food delivery platform issued the following statement: ‘please avoid ordering during peak afternoon unless absolutely necessary’. Yet in the platform economy, lower order volumes correspondingly diminish workers’ earnings. So, this seemingly well-intentioned request to customers aimed at reducing the delivery workers’ exposure to the intense afternoon heat, neglects the dilemma the workers face between making viable earnings and risking their immediate and long-term health. Another example is of a ride-hailing platform that introduced a ‘weather fee’ in Vietnam, which imposed an extra charge on an order whenever the local temperature hit 35℃. This was counter-intuitive, as it incentivized the already precarious worker to work extra hours regardless of the weather conditions, thus putting their lives at risk.

A common misconception is that extreme environmental situations affect only two -wheel drivers. Beyond the physical discomfort to themselves, even auto and taxi drivers face additional challenges of managing customer expectations and interactions on topics that are related to climate change. For example, a common conflict between drivers and customers, especially during warm day-time hours is the driver’s reluctance to switch on the air conditioning, fearing higher fuel consumption. An Uber driver in Mumbai shares his experiences and strategy in coping with climate change:

”I don’t want to turn on the air conditioner in my car throughout the day. All the money I make goes on fuel charges. Over time, I realised that during the summer the best I can do is drive only during the night. The customers usually don’t insist on travelling with the AC on at night. Of course, I lose sleep and it affects my health. But I don’t have any other choice”. (Fieldnotes, Mumbai 2023).

Apart from highlighting the precarious nature of the work, these cases illustrate the importance of engaging all key stakeholders when developing solutions. Specifically, they emphasize the need to recognise the gig worker as an important stakeholder in the gig economy. They make clear that addressing climate challenges in the platform economy requires a collaborative effort from companies, workers, and the government.

App based platforms were once considered part of the sharing economy and hailed as harbingers of sustainability and collaborative consumption. However, with rapid expansion, they are now criticized for their significant environmental and social costs and for increasing road congestion and intensity.

Conversely, emerging research highlights the potential of platforms to be part of the solution, positioning them as essential stakeholders in sustainability efforts, emphasizing the need for collaborative approaches that integrate labour rights and climate justice. Platform companies have the best of technology and resources at their disposal to craft solutions that benefit their customers, workers and investors alike. For this, they need to view all stakeholders as equally important, create avenues for dialogue between them and work with them to incrementally build equitable solutions for both people and the planet.

Bibliography

Economic survey of Asia. (1991). Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. https://www.unescap.org/kp/2024/survey2024
Vu, A. N., & Nguyen, D. L. (2024). The gig economy: The precariat in a climate precarious world. World Development Perspectives, 34, 100596. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245229292400033X
https://x.com/zomato/status/1797179156528005204
Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Kar, A. K., Baabdullah, A. M., Grover, P., Abbas, R., … & Wade, M. (2022). Climate change and COP26: Are digital technologies and information management part of the problem or the solution? An editorial reflection and call to action. International Journal of Information Management, 63, 102456. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401221001493

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Author:

Anna Elias is a PhD researcher at International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research explores socio economic transitions brought about by digitisation, particularly its effect on livelihoods in the informal economy. With a strong professional background in the social impact sector, her expertise lies at the intersection of evidence-based research and evaluation, digital innovation, and sustainability.

Disaster Risk Reduction doesn’t (always) need to be expensive: introducing Frugal DRR

By ISS Blog Bliss 10 October 2024 1849 views

In this blog, to mark global Disaster Risk Reduction Day, Tom Ansell (HSC Coordinator) considers whether disaster risk reduction activities can be made less-resource intensive through Frugal Innovation. Whilst Frugal DRR shouldn’t be considered a money-saving replacement for development and infrastructure work, it does provide an opportunity for communities to reduce their vulnerability and increase their capacity for dealing with the consequences of hazards that could include extreme weather, geological hazards, or other environmental hazards.

What is DRR? And what’s wrong with the term ‘natural disasters’?

Disaster Risk Reduction, according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) is activities that are “aimed at preventing new and reducing existing disaster risk and managing residual risk, all of which contribute to strengthening resilience and therefore to the achievement of sustainable development.” So, in simple terms, activities that work to prevent and mitigate risks to reduce the effects of disasters. It’s important to note here that we use the term disaster in connection with hazards like earthquakes, floods and others while avoiding the ‘natural disaster’, as this ignores the social dimension of disasters.

People across the world live in places that have different levels of risk and have different vulnerabilities in the face of these risks. More than the hazard itself, a much larger defining factor for how much damage, social upheaval, and loss of life occurs is how vulnerable people are, and how prepared they are for when a potential hazard becomes a disaster. In other words, an earthquake of magnitude 8 will have significantly different effects in a wealthy country with a strong governance system, to a much poorer country with (for example) a fragmented government. In the words of Margaret Arnold at the World Bank, “the key lesson is that disasters are social constructs. People are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and natural hazards due not just to their geographical context, but their financial, their social status, their cultural status, their gender status, their access to services, their level of poverty, their access to decision making, and their access to justice.”

For example, Tokyo often suffers from extreme stormy weather: as many countries with a Pacific coast do. The city of Tokyo, however, also has one of the largest storm drains in the world to help divert water resulting from storms or extremely heavy rainfall. The project, completed in the 1990s and costing around 3 billion US Dollars, means that though the city is often affected by tropical cyclones and typhoons, there is typically much less loss of life in the Tokyo area than others affected by the same typhoon – especially as the city of Tokyo has well-developed evacuation routes, early warning and information systems, and more besides.

This example serves to demonstrate the purpose of DRR activities: to prevent risks and – where this is not possible – to minimize the overall damage caused by extreme weather. As the ‘no natural disasters’ movement emphasizes, reacting after the event is a less intelligent way to respond to disasters, compared to prevention, pre-preparation, and planning is a much more productive and intelligent way to ‘respond’ to disasters. Various frameworks for ‘good’ risk management activities have been devised, including the Hyogo Framework (2005-2015) and Sendai Framework (2015-2030).

Are DRR activities always expensive?

In the example above, of the city of Tokyo, a major contributing factor to mitigating climate risks for the city involved constructing a large piece of public infrastructure. Similar projects have taken place around the world, for example the Delta Works in the Netherlands , the Thames Barrier in the UK, or the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West Closure Complex in New Orleans in the USA. These three examples are all related to storm surges, flooding, or other water-related hazards. But (expensive) risk-reducing infrastructure also exists to mitigate the effects of rockfall (for example in Interlaken in Switzerland), avalanches (for example the Gazex system), or to stabilize land vulnerable to landslides through enormous retaining walls (for example in West Bengal, India).

At this point, it might seem that all DRR activities are exceptionally expensive, very large public infrastructure that are only available to the very wealthiest regions in the world. But that would be a serious oversimplification of what smaller groups of citizens, with or without the support of institutions, can achieve to mitigate risk and so reduce their vulnerability. DRR activities also include mapping areas that will be most affected by an extreme event, creating evacuation routes, developing information systems and early-warning systems, training citizens on flood-proofing their homes, or even making informational videos on what to do should a disaster strike.

This is not to say that large infrastructure projects aren’t important: indeed they can be transformational. However, it is important to emphasize that DRR activities are not always expensive: even though an all-round DRR plan for a place will likely include both more expensive infrastructure, less economically-expensive activities can also make a difference.

Can ‘Frugal Innovation’ inspire low-cost but effective interventions?

In order to develop new ideas around lower-cost (frugal) risk reduction activities, it is useful to dive into the world of Frugal Innovation. The International Centre for Frugal Innovation (ICFI), based at ISS and part of LDE, considers the practice and approach to be a potentially transformative way of finding new solutions to growing societal problems, in a non-excessive way. Andre Leliveld and Peter Knorringa, in an article from 2017 setting out the potential relationship between Frugal Innovation and development, note that the field sprouted from multiple sources but takes much inspiration from jugaad practices in South Asia. Jugaad is an excellent catch-all term (borrowed from Hindi, and with similar terms in Punjabi, Urdu, and various Dravidian languages including Telugu and Malyalam) for low-cost and often ingenious solutions to nagging problems; as well as the kind of mindset that allows the creative thinking around these solutions to occur. Whilst the term and thinking is often used in business (to create products for people with less purchasing power), it is very versatile.

Utilising some of the thinking inherent within Frugal Innovation in relation to DRR activities requires taking a solutions-oriented approach, and making use of existing resources, skills, or initiatives to reduce vulnerability by mitigating risk.

Painting and planning: Frugal Disaster Risk Reduction in action

How urban communities adapt to heatwaves across India is an interesting way to demonstrate how integrating Frugal Innovation techniques into Disaster Risk Reduction carries the potential for meaningful reduction in vulnerability.

Heatwaves have the potential to be very destructive, and one solution that is being rolled out across several areas that have a high number of informal dwellings in cities including Mumbai and Nagpur is the low-cost but high-yield technique of painting roofs white (to reflect the sun) and installing secondary ‘shade roofs’ on buildings. This can reduce inside temperatures by several degrees on the hottest of days. Similarly, a network of inexpensive recording devices has been installed to track ‘hotspots’ in the city, which can inform where communal ‘cooling zones’ need to be set up local city corporations or voluntary groups. And, in Ahmedabad in the north-west of India, a ‘Heat Action Plan’ was developed by the city corporation and scientific partners that is estimated to have prevented hundreds of fatalities.

Developing evacuation routes, making sure that citizens are prepared for what to do in a disaster, small and uncomplicated changes to people’s homes, or even utilising close-knit communities and communication networks as informal warning systems may not structurally reduce peoples’yet vulnerabilities yet can make a difference in preventing the worst of disaster impacts. And, whilst not as transformational as large public infrastructure projects, any gain in a communities’ resilience is an important step. Luckily ‘Frugal Innovation’ techniques show us that DRR doesn’t always need to be expensive.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author

Tom Ansell is the Coordinator of the Humanitarian Studies Centre and International Humanitarian Studies Association.

UNFCCC Conference 2024 | How a feminist approach to climate change can help bring together animal welfare and gender equality agendas

By ISS Blog Bliss 19 September 202414 December 2024 1948 views

Attending the UNFCCC (SB60) Conference in Bonn in June this year as a representative of the World Federation for Animals (WFA) was a remarkable experience for ISS PhD researcher Irma Nugrahanti, most of all because it visibilized the striking parallels between climate change-related issues faced by women and animals and the crucial role of these two advocacy groups in fighting climate change. In this blog article, she reflects on different conversations that took place at the conference and how this reaffirmed the significance of a multifaceted approach to climate issues.

At the recent UNFCCC conference, observing dialogues on animal welfare, gender, and climate change enhanced my understanding of how these topics are interlinked and what this means for climate action. Each conversation opened my eyes to the rich tapestry of perspectives, revealing how interconnected and parallel these issues are, like chain links, impacting one another and forming an intricate and powerful network of interactions. Reflecting on the discussions at the UNFCCC conference and beyond, it is evident that embracing the intersectionality of feminism and animal welfare is essential for creating a just, sustainable, and resilient world for all living beings — and for tackling climate change.

A step in the right direction

While preparing for the UNFCCC side event focused on the crucial role of animals in climate change mitigation strategies, I reviewed the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of various countries. I observed the notable failure to acknowledge the contribution animals can make to climate resilience. However, from different discussions at the conference, I observed a positive shift towards recognizing the role of both human and non-human actors in environmental protection. For example, the crucial role of the social sciences in understanding indigenous communities and the human-nature relationship, particularly within the context of ocean-climate dynamics, was acknowledged.

Additionally, there was a strong emphasis on engaging local governments, advocating for locally-led solutions tailored to community needs, and advancing the implementation of global stocktake suggestions. These recommendations include incorporating animals into the Loss and Damage (L&D) matrix, allocating resources to scientific research and data collection, and ensuring that the contributions of animals are acknowledged in IPCC reports and NDCs. These discussions highlight the need to move beyond an anthropogenic view of humans as the central to climate solutions and to embrace a plurality of perspectives that value different types of knowledge and practices, the diversity of life, and its intrinsic values.

As these conversations advanced, it became evident that while progress was made in embracing different perspectives, the commonalities between the experiences of women and animals in relation to climate change have not been sufficiently acknowledged. And they should: women and animals, while vulnerable to the effects of climate change, both play a pivotal role in mitigation efforts. Thus, furthering the role of women in climate change action and strategies and protecting animals are intertwined objectives. This recognition is crucial because caring for animals transcends compassion; it is a profound expression of feminism.

Recognizing the shared challenges faced by both women and animals in the context of climate change could help broaden our understanding of vulnerability and resilience, so that we can transform existing policies that often overlook these marginalized groups. In doing so, we must also recognize and confront the existing power dynamics that influence climate policies. As many studies have shown (see here, here and here), in the climate change domain, men have a dominant presence, namely in research, policy, implementation, and activism.

What women and animals have in common

1. Both women and animals face substantial obstacles stemming from oppression, violence, and objectification.

The connection between patriarchal gender relations and the exploitation of animals reveal how sexism and speciesism come from the desire to dominate inferior groups; this mindset, rooted in patriarchal values, shapes people’s attitude toward women and animals, as Ashley Allcorn and Shirley M Ogletree have noted. Women in countries with a strong patriarchal culture experience multifaceted oppressions, which results in limited possibilities for accessing education and economic opportunities, as well as in exposure to growing harassment and violence. This systematic marginalization is embedded in legal frameworks that hinder gender equality. Likewise, animals endure exploitation and cruelty, being seen as simple commodities rather than sentient beings.

2. The economic value of animals and women in mitigating climate change is underrecognized.

Moreover, although women’s environmental care work plays a crucial role in climate change mitigation, economic assessments often overlook their value. Conventional economic indicators, including the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), fail to include the unpaid care work performed by women in the form of managing natural resources and supporting their communities. This omission underestimates their valuable efforts and maintains ongoing gender disparities. Likewise, the ecological benefits offered by animals, such as carbon sequestration and biodiversity preservation, are rarely accounted for in economic analyses. This omission results in the insufficient protection of animals and a lack of investment in animal welfare. Integrating economic analysis using a gender lens, such as gender-responsive climate budgeting, and the direct valuation of animal welfare in environmental economics may help to ensure adequate resources and appropriate valuation for both women and animals.

3. Both women and animals play a pivotal role in protecting the environment and combating climate change.

Women’s knowledge of sustainable agriculture, water management, and biodiversity conservation is invaluable. Thousands of women-led initiatives around the world serve as proof. For instance in Peru, the indigenous women-led initiative Asociación de Mujeres Waorani de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana (AMWAE) is dedicated to preserving the Amazon rainforest. These women use indigenous knowledge to combat deforestation and advocate for sustainable land use, making a substantial contribution to carbon sequestration and the preservation of biodiversity. Similarly, women play a critical role in community-based conservation efforts. In Kenya, the Green Belt Movement, founded by Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, has empowered women to plant trees, combat deforestation, and restore ecosystems. This initiative not only mitigates climate change but also improves local livelihoods and promotes gender equality.

In a similar vein, the preservation of an ecological balance and the promotion of biodiversity depend on the existence of healthy animal populations. For instance, African forest elephants make significant contributions to natural carbon capture. They reduce competition and facilitate the growth of larger trees that store more carbon by trampling young trees as they move through the rainforests. This would increase carbon capture equivalent to over 6,000 metric tons of CO₂ per square kilometre if their population were to be restored to its previous level, which highlights their critical role in climate regulation.

Why an ecofeminism lens is useful

Ecofeminism, a branch of feminist theory, offers a critical analysis of the dominance of nature and animals imposed by patriarchal systems, drawing parallels with the oppression experienced by women and marginalized populations. Carol Adams and Lori Gruen in their 2022 book Ecofeminism: feminist interaction with other animals and the earth explain the notion of the “logic of domination”. This concept highlights the shared struggles women and animals experience: they are subjected to hierarchical dualisms that diminish their worth, objectify them, and dismiss their individuality and intrinsic value. On objectification, women are often valued according to their appearance or reproductive capabilities, while meats and dairy products have been deeply valued and integral to human diets in most cultures for thousands of years.

Another example of using a feminist lens is incorporating multi-species justice in climate change action. Multi-species justice theories advocate for the recognition of rights, welfare, and interconnectedness between human and non-human beings. It calls for rethinking justice systems for the impacts of human actions on non-human entities and the environment. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka in their book Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights for example advocate for a political framework that recognizes animals as co-citizens and grants them rights and protections. This viewpoint challenges the traditional concept of justice by advocating for a political framework that acknowledges animals as co-citizens. Their ideas extend the concept of justice, commonly applied to humans and challenging the anthropocentric bias in political ideologies.

Lastly, the feminist and animal rights movements are both grounded on ethical issues. Lori Gruen emphasizes the objective that ethical veganism and feminism have in common, namely to put a stop to the exploitation of the powerless by those in positions of power. This ethical position challenges the prevailing systems of oppression and exploitation, promoting a society that is more compassionate and just.

Toward an ethics of care

Ecofeminism offers a framework for defining an ethics of care that transcends human interactions and includes every living being and the environment. It emphasizes care as an essential component of our interactions with others, both human and non-human. Its relational and caring approach not only criticizes current power structures but also suggests a paradigm shift toward inclusive and compassionate behaviours, especially those related to animal welfare. In her book In A Different Voice, Carol Gilligan critiques anthropocentric and patriarchal structures through her definition of ethic of care by promoting a caring and attentive connection with nature, akin to a mother’s care for her child. This entails actively listening to and caring for nature in a non-hierarchical manner, promoting a transition from unequal power dynamics to ecologically responsive relationships.

The ethics of care promotes a deep appreciation for natural environments, including animals, which contribute to the process of carbon sequestration and the conservation of biodiversity, which is essential for the ability of ecosystems to face the impacts of climate change. Therefore, in our ecological relationship, it is important to reflect on the way we are being, doing, and seeing to be more environmentally conscious and honour the interconnectedness of all living beings. I believe the common task for posthumanist feminist scholars and policymakers now is to translate this concept into policy and legal frameworks, a complicated but important mission to achieve.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author

Irma Nugrahanti

Irma Nugrahanti is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), focusing on the intersection of gender, climate change, and public finance management. Her research highlights the importance of integrating a gender lens into climate budgeting policies and practices, particularly at the national and regional levels of public expenditure management. With a background in the non-profit sector, Irma has extensive experience in finance, program management, and policy advocacy, striving to bridge the gap between research and practice to create inclusive and sustainable climate policies.

“Happy cows without happy workers?” How Migrant Justice is fighting for improved labour conditions in the US’ dairy industry

By ISS Blog Bliss 3 September 20243 October 2024 2406 views

Dairy production often relies on poorly paid and precarious migrant labour, but while the welfare of animals in the dairy sector is increasingly emphasized, that of the people working in the sector receives less attention. In this blog article, Hammal Aslam and Karin Astrid Siegmann discuss the efforts of migrant dairy workers’ organization Migrant Justice to highlight the precarious labour conditions migrant dairy workers face and to push for the sector’s transformation. The organization’s approach combines the expansion of workers’ associational capacity and the forging of alliances with other actors — a successful strategy that can inspire other movements.

Migrant workers formed more than half of the total work force in the US’ dairy sector in 2014. According to the farmworker solidarity organization Farmworker Justice, “[…] if this work force were to disappear, US dairy production would decrease by 48.4 billion pounds while the cost of milk would increase by an estimated 90.4%.” This suggests that the low prices of dairy are subsidized by the workers of the sector, a result of their systematically suppressed human and labour rights. In practical terms, downward pressures on dairy prices translate into a range of exploitative arrangements including but not limited to long working hours, low wages, and frequent exposure to occupational hazards.

The development of more complex global and regional production networks in and beyond agri-business has raised pressing concerns about labour rights. Therefore, marshalling public support and fostering connections between various segments and actors in society seems to be a viable alternative for promoting social justice, given the erosion of power of labour unions caused by neoliberal processes. In this blog article, we talk about Migrant Justice, a Vermont-based migrant workers’ organization that is seeking to change the US’ dairy industry from the inside out.

Pursuing dignified working conditions

In Vermont, a state in the northeastern US in which dairy sales represent more than two thirds of agricultural sales, a coalition of dairy farm workers, labour activists, and consumers have encouragingly tackled some of these long-suppressed issues after the death of a young Mexican farmworker, Jose Obeth, in a preventable accident in 2009. Organized under the banner of Migrant Justice, Vermont’s migrant dairy workers — many of whom are undocumented — and their allies in civil society have been campaigning for migrant workers’ rights.

The Milk with Dignity program that Migrant Justice implemented in 2018 has sought to engender corporate responses that assume some responsibility for injustices and to guarantee decent labour conditions in the dairy chain. The programme incentivizes improved working conditions at the farm level through a premium paid by upstream buyers for milk produced under conditions that comply with an agreed labour standard monitored by workers and a third party, the Milk with Dignity Standards Council.

In a legal context hostile to workers in the agricultural sector and to migrant labour in particular, and in the absence of collective bargaining power, labour rights activists associated with Migrant Justice have adopted a multi-pronged approach to address abuses in the dairy value chain. They mobilize popular support from civil society to pressure commercial buyers of milk such as the supermarket chain Hannaford for more dignified labour conditions. This advocacy has led to the Milk with Dignity program’s institutionalized mechanisms for settling workers’ grievances.

The expansion of associational capacity for workers and the formation of coalitions with other actors have also catalysed the passing of progressive legislations. Especially the recent landmark passing of Vermont PRO Act not only widens workers’ collective action rights but also extends bargaining rights to domestic workers, a group of workers devoid of labour rights since 1940s. Previously, Migrant Justice also lobbied for the Education Equity for Immigrant Students bill, which now ensures that migrants have access to higher education regardless of their legal statuses.

By holding accountable corporate actors and positioning workers centrally in their programs, Migrant Justice’s approach goes a step ahead of typical consumer-focused conceptions of ethical consumption and corporate social responsibility.

Lobbying the big players

When a delegation of Migrant Justice arrived at the ISS for a conversation on “Lobbying Ahold for Milk with Dignity” this April, they had just returned from an action in Amsterdam. The delegation had travelled from the US at the occasion of the Annual General Meeting of Dutch–Belgian multinational Ahold Delhaize to highlight human rights violations in their dairy chain, where the executives of the company convened to celebrate € 88.65 billion in 2023 sales. Ahold Delhaize’s subsidiary, the Hannaford chain of supermarkets in the northeastern US, sources dairy from farms in Vermont, where workers originating from Mexico and Central America work in inhumane conditions.

Building a counterhegemonic current

A Migrant Justice delegate opened the conversation at the ISS with the remark that “[w]e might have happy cows, but without happy workers.” His remark showed that in the dairy industry, corporates actors often talk about happy cows, but that the working conditions of the labourers are rarely part of the agenda. The conversation was a lesson in how modern-day global value chains have evolved, how they lock in cheap and exploited labour and continue making enormous profit, and what creative and effective strategies are needed to defend human and labour rights in such conditions.

Celebrating successes

So far, Migrant Justice has celebrated several successes:

The expansion of associational capacity for workers and the formation of coalitions with other actors, including civil societyactors, employers, and public representatives, has been one successful strategy in Vermont.
While global ice-cream manufacturer Ben & Jerry’s is the only company who currently participates in the Milk with Dignity programme, this nevertheless means that one fifth of Vermont’s dairy industry is covered by the programme.
Five years into the programme, over US$ 3 million has been invested in boosting workers’ wages and bonuses as well as in improvements to their labour and housing conditions.

Migrant Justice members showed us that improved outcomes for workers have been made possible by building a broad-based counterhegemonic current and articulating demands through both cooperation and contestation. Their experience is an encouraging example for innovative ways to achieve justice at work and making small, yet meaningful gains for workers and their families at the bottom of the ladder. They can prefigure significant change that places those currently constructed as social, political, and economic ‘nobodies’ at the centre of an alternative vision of agri-food chains.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

Authors:

Hammal Aslam is a PhD researcher at ISS. In his doctoral work he is focusing on rural transformations in Balochistan, Pakistan. Previously, he worked as a university lecturer and was actively involved with organizations that advocate for the rights of Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Karin Astrid Siegmann is an Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at ISS. In her research, she seeks to understand how precarious workers challenge and change the social, economic and political structures that marginalize labour.

How artisanal fishers across the world are trying to turn the tide by adapting to climate and anthropogenic change

By ISS Blog Bliss 16 July 20247 October 2024 4121 views

Artisanal fishers across the world are facing change from all sides. While these changes have been well documented, the intricacies of the adaptation strategies they are forced to assume remain underexplored. A group of researchers met at a workshop held at the ISS in December last year to discuss the challenges artisanal fishers face and what we can learn from their responses. In this blog article, Ilaha Abasli, Nina Swen, and Oane Visser highlight the key takeaways of the workshop, showing that while artisanal fishers are trying to turn the tide by adapting, the challenges they face at times may seem unsurmountable.

Artisanal fishing is a profession and livelihood profoundly impacted by climate and other anthropogenic changes (Mills, 2018; Ojea et al., 2020; Otero et al., 2022). Fishers across the globe are facing declining fish stocks, biodiversity loss, and shrinking spaces caused mainly by environmental pollution, changing sea temperatures, and fish migration, combined with increasingly restrictive ecological conservation policies. They are forced to adapt their practices, for example by changing how and where they fish.

The adaptation practices of artisanal fishers remain under-researched, however, which prompted a group of researchers at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) to organize a workshop in December last year titled ‘Artisanal fisheries, climate change and knowledge for adaptation’, which sought to bring together junior and senior researchers from the Netherlands and beyond who work on socio-ecological aspects of fisheries, climate change, and marine anthropologies.

We as workshop organizers focused on the following questions: How do fishers adapt to the changes they face? What role do collaboration and new technologies play? The first part of the workshop comprised a panel discussion among early-career researchers centred around artisanal fisheries, knowledge, and technology in the context of climate change adaptation. The second part of the workshop featured a plenary session where senior researchers discussed their research on artisanal fisheries. This was followed by a roundtable discussion with representatives from academia and beyond. This blog article shares the workshop’s key takeaways.

Is climate change the only cause of the challenges fishers face?

Artisanal fishers are among the first to notice climate and other anthropogenic changes, including fluctuations in sea levels and temperatures and changes in the quantity and quality of available fish, altered fish migration patterns, and the appearance or extinction of species.

Climate change and anthropogenic activities heavily impact artisanal fisheries. Ilaha Abasli, Nina Swen, and Oane Visser of the ISS showed that fisheries situated along the coast of the Caspian Sea for instance are threatened by oil and gas extraction that causes pollution, disrupts fish migration, and affects fish populations. Vitor Renck of Wageningen University & Research demonstrated that Brazilian artisanal fishers in Bahia face overfishing by larger vessels and inadequate regulation of fishing activities. And Yasmine Ahmed Hafez of SOAS University of London noted that at Lake Victoria, strict quota systems and environmental conservation measures exacerbate the negative impacts, limiting their access to certain areas and types of fish.

Climate and anthropogenic change is fundamentally changing how small-scale fisheries are operating.

The combination of climate and anthropogenic impacts on these water bodies lead to fundamental changes in the practices and livelihoods of small-scale fisheries. They are unable to maintain the same level of fishing in quantity and quality as they did previously and have to go further offshore in vessels that are ill suited to withstanding harsher conditions, risking their lives. These changes often affect their practices, income, and food sovereignty.

For instance, fishing communities must adapt to unfamiliar species, such as the invasive round goby in the Eastern Baltic Sea. Guntra Aistara of the Central European University talked about how such invasive species transition from being perceived as threats to becoming a valuable food source. It exemplifies how communities rapidly recognize their nutritional and social significance.

By sharing their skills, knowledge, and technology with each other, fishers are learning more about adapting.

Many of the case studies discussed during the workshop highlighted the exchange of knowledge and technology as a key adaptation strategy. Workshop participants drew on their research to discuss its definition and the ways in which it manifests. Artisanal fisheries in the Caspian Sea for example adapted to change through collective initiatives; these include pooling resources to acquire affordable technologies like GPS trackers and life vests, which facilitates navigation in deeper waters, and sharing skills, for example teaching others how to swim and how to repair and refurbish old technology and boats.

Along the Caspian coast, communication platforms and tools such as WhatsApp groups and gatherings at tea houses (cayxanas) served as a way of sharing information on weather events, fish migration patterns, and recipes for preparing fish previously considered “poor man’s food”. Aistara noted that fishers from the Eastern Baltic and Caspian Seas share a Soviet history that enable them to compare adaptation strategies. Both groups have adapted to the new conditions of the seas by becoming skilled in repairing, constructing, and repurposing materials and other existing technologies.

Knowledge- and technology-sharing practices are influenced by social norms and values.

Such cases reveal that while knowledge and technology sharing are widespread, these practices are influenced by community social norms and values. In specific communities, people for example uphold and respect territorial boundaries agreed upon by fishers and refrain from crossing into each other’s parts of the sea, even if it means catching fewer fish.

Ahmed Hafez highlighted the bottom-up adaptation process taking place at Lake Victoria and Egypt’s Nile Delta by reflecting on internal dynamics that (re)shape social norms and values such as race, migration, and gender. She explicitly focused on patriarchal norms, as men in the communities mostly dominate fisheries. Iddrisu Amadu and Ingrid Boas of Wageningen University & Research talked about how nomadic Fante fishing communities in Senegal and Gambia are adapting, focusing on the entanglements between social and material elements across land-sea spaces (1). They also stressed that mobilities and their challenging encounters within fisheries during adaptation transcend fixed land-sea boundaries.

Traditional knowledge driving local adaptation needs to be incorporated into official adaptation strategies.

Artisanal fishers in Bahia have successfully adapted technologies, actively using advanced GPS technology and various nets combined with traditional knowledge to navigate changing waters. Renck observed that the significance of adaptation to fishing communities (in Siribinha and Poças) extends beyond preserving fisheries; they are also actively involved in mangrove preservation initiatives in Brazil. Workshop participants agreed that documenting and incorporating the traditional knowledge of local fishers into adaptation strategies is of critical importance for fostering a dialogue between scientific and indigenous and local knowledge systems amidst environmental and anthropogenic changes.

Contextual factors have a bearing on collaboration but does not prevent it.

In several fishing communities, collaboration among fishers is facilitated or constrained by the geographical, political, legal, technological, cultural, and social context they live in. Cornelie Quist of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) for example shared that despite their diversity, artisanal fishing communities have mobilised nationally and globally in manifold ways to push for recognition and prompt political change through policies and treaties. The most significant achievement in this respect is the endorsement in 2014 of the International Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Alleviation following their lobbying efforts. Quist noted that these guidelines are important for promoting a human rights approach in fisheries policies.

Fishers are adapting, but what does the future hold?

A critical reflection followed on the limitations of adaptation to climate change. Participants highlighted unease among fishers in the adaptation process, particularly because of its high costs for artisanal fisheries already unacknowledged by governance regimes and crowded out by industrial aqua fisheries. And despite pooling resources, adaptation through technology and collective action is only sometimes feasible due to ecological and governance limitations.

For instance, at Lake Victoria and in the Nile Delta, artisanal fishers are forced to abandon their fishing grounds due to resource depletion and relocate further along the river. Similarly, in the case of the Caspian Sea, some artisanal fishers have abandoned their vessels and have become taxi drivers to provide for their families. Joeri Scholtens of the University of Amsterdam commented that fishers working in the Indian Ocean are subjected to a shrinking space for adaptation, with smaller fisheries being outcompeted by bigger industrial vessels.

Additionally, adaptation practices are influenced and disrupted by evolving border regulations and stricter governmental policies prioritising environmental preservation or industrial activities, such as imposing quotas, fines, and territorial markings. Scholtens demonstrated how the Indian government’s Blue Revolution and Blue Economy policies from 1960 to 2020 squeezed out many of the small fisheries and reinforced the pre-existing vulnerabilities of these groups.

We need to work towards preserving traditional knowledge systems and better understanding and recognising their role in modern adaptation strategies.

All in all, the workshop sparked extensive discussions and highlighted the cultural, economic, and social importance of artisanal fishing. Moreover, it highlighted the significance of fishers’ knowledge in addressing the challenges posed by climate and anthropogenic change. The conversation also discussed the interplay between moral and legal boundaries and associated imaginaries. As Aistara aptly summarised, the future holds manifold uncertainties for artisanal fishing, influenced by climate and economic changes and conditioned by political regimes and internal dynamics.

(1) This case explored the intricate ways that fluid relations binding mobile fishery practices (including women involved in market and land practices) of the Fante on land and sea in a transnational context enable adaptive strategies, challenging conventional understandings of cross-border land and sea-based fishery mobilities.

We would like to thank all participants for their thoughtful and engaging contributions:

Callie Berman (PhDResearcher, Cambridge University);
Cornelie Quist (Sociologist; Member of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers);
Guntra Aistara (Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University);
Ilaha Abasli and Nina Swen (PhD researchers, International Institute of Social Studies);
Joeri Scholtens (Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam);
Ingrid Boas and Iddrisu Amadu (respectively Associate Professor and PhD researcher, Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University);
Matteo Lattuada (Post-Doctoral researcher, Technische Universität Braunschweig);
Oane Visser (Associate Professor, International Institute of Social Studies);
Per Knutsson (Senior Lecturer, Director of Center for Sea and Society, University of Gothenburg).
Vitor Renck ( Post-Doctoral researcher, Federal University of São Paulo and Wageningen University); and
Yasmine Ahmed Hafez (PhD researcher, SOAS University of London).

List of presentations:

Abasli, I., N. Swen, N & O. Visser (2023) ‘Climate change in Caspian Sea, small-fisheries and climate adaptation’. Presentation at the ISS Workshop ‘Artisanal Fisheries, Climate Change and Knowledge for Adaptation Workshop’, 8 December 2023.

Ahmed Hafez, Y. (2023) ‘A lakeview on Nile politics: A socio-environmental analysis of fishing in Lake Victoria and the Egyptian Delta lakes’. Presentation at the ISS Workshop ‘Artisanal Fisheries, Climate Change and Knowledge for Adaptation Workshop’, 8 December 2023.

Aistara, G. (2023) ‘“The ugly guest who’s come to stay”. Round Goby from foe to food on the Eastern Baltic Coast’. Presentation at the ISS Workshop ‘Artisanal Fisheries, Climate Change and Knowledge for Adaptation Workshop’, 8 December 2023.

Amadu, I. and I. Boas ( 2023) ‘Fisherfolk navigating west African borderland in the context of changing environments’. Presentation at the ISS Workshop ‘Artisanal Fisheries, Climate Change and Knowledge for Adaptation Workshop’, 8 December 2023.

Quist, C. (2023). Roundtable Discussion, ‘Artisanal Fisheries, Climate Change and Knowledge for Adaptation Workshop’, 8 December 2023.

Renck, V. (2023) ‘Varieties of expertise in local communities. Insights from artisanal fishing villages in Brazil’. Presentation at the ISS Workshop ‘Artisanal Fisheries, Climate Change and Knowledge for Adaptation Workshop’, 8 December 2023.

Scholtens, J. (2023) ‘Blue revolutions, shrinking spaces and adaptation of small- scale fishers in the Indian Ocean Region.’ Presentation at the ISS Workshop ‘Artisanal Fisheries, Climate Change and Knowledge for Adaptation Workshop’, 8 December 2023.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Oane Visser is an associate professor, Political Ecology research group, ISS) studies the role of technology in agrifood and the environment, for instance in precision agriculture, greenhouses and urban agriculture.

Ilaha Abasli is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (Erasmus University Rotterdam). Her research interests include the circular economy in the Global South, especially its social dimension, and fostering sustainability through science-driven and participatory policies.

Nina Swen is a Ph.D. researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS). Nina’s research focuses on knowledge, technologies, and human-environmental relations in contexts of pollution and extractivism, with a regional focus on the Amazon.

“Who cares about social reproduction in a time of climate crisis?” Reflections from environmental justice scholar Giovanna Di Chiro

By ISS Blog Bliss 27 June 2024 3158 views

[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1592900783478{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1592900766479{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: -10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]The enduring efforts by marginalized women across the world are sustaining community well-being in the face of the climate crisis, which is why their work of social reproduction is needed now more than ever. Professor of Environmental Studies Giovanna Di Chiro in her recent visit to the ISS spoke about the power of stories to turn our attention to the importance of social reproduction or life-making as part of “living environmentalism”. In this blog article, ISS Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development Wendy Harcourt shares some of Di Chiro’s reflections.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”28868″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Renowned scholar of environmental justice at Swarthmore College in the United States Giovanna Di Chiro visited the ISS on 12 June this year, where she presented a seminar titled “Social Reproduction in the Age of Climate Crisis”. In the seminar organized by the ISS Political Ecology research group, Di Chiro pondered the following important question: What would a just approach to ‘sustainability’ look like that supports ‘life-making’ in all its forms, even — or especially — in the wake of the ruins of capitalism?

Using a critical ecofeminist lens[1], she examined how neoliberal ‘green’ solutions[2] to the climate crisis have not taken seriously the material effects of embodiment and the capacity for communities (human and non-human) to accomplish social reproduction — that is, the capacity to sustain everyday life and to thrive into the future. I invited her to talk about this at the ISS, as her research insights are crucial for our ongoing collective efforts to address multiple, intersecting challenges and crises. In this blog article, I share some of her reflections.

The convergence of crises — and the convergence of struggles

Social reproduction risks are now intersecting with environmental crises, leading to the convergence of struggles for social reproduction and environmental justice. Giovanna Di Chiro’s work is inspired by women grassroots activists in the environmental justice movement in the United States who have been fighting for their survival and the survival of their children and families. These women activists have been seeking to stop the onslaught of toxic pollution from chemical factories, waste incinerators, and many other toxic assaults on their lives. In her research, Di Chiro has documented[3] how grassroots women leaders — who are largely poor and low-income Black, Brown, and Indigenous women — organize to build connections between environmental movements and women’s movements. These activists expose how the intersecting systems of hetero-patriarchy and racial capitalism have resulted in the poisoning of their air, water, and lands, and show how these have harmed their own reproductive health and the well-being of their communities.

Yet, despite decades of women’s environmental justice activism, the chances for everyday survival and possible futures for millions of people, and for billions of other species on the Earth, have gotten worse; we are all familiar with the horrible statistics of worsening climate disasters, the mass extinctions of plants and animals, and widespread violence and war. Adding to this the attack on reproductive rights in the US by the Republican right wing and the rise of neofascism worldwide, we see even more threats to social reproduction and survival into the future as it relates to environmental justice. Everyday survival is still a problem for many low-income Black and Brown communities in the US, and survival remains the first priority.

One example of the connection between social reproduction and environmental injustice is the recent decision by the Republican Governor of Louisiana to withhold millions in federal monies to repair the city of New Orleans’ decaying water treatment infrastructure (which is needed to prevent flooding, toxic lead leaching, and saltwater infiltration in the city’s drinking water due to rising sea levels in the Gulf of Mexico). He withheld this funding because New Orleans’s Democrat-controlled city government had refused to comply with the state of Louisiana’s total ban on abortion, which would require the city to arrest and prosecute low-income and poor women who seek abortions in the state.

Another example of the increased threat to social reproduction and its connection to environmentalism involves rising incidences of eco-fascist rhetoric that blames the “over-population” of immigrant bodies for jeopardizing the sustainability of our environment. In 2019, two years after Trump came into office and authorized anti-immigrant violence across the US, a 21-year-old white man opened fire at a busy Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, targeting the predominantly Latino and Mexican shoppers. He killed 23 people and wounded another 26. The shooter had earlier published a lengthy, online manifesto expressing his white supremacist, ‘eco-fascist’ beliefs, stating, “I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion of Hispanics.” He blamed Latinos for overpopulating the country and taking away real Americans’ jobs and destroying the environment. This is a revival of an extremist environmentalist politics blaming the invasion and over-breeding of racialized bodies for the country’s downfall.

‘Living worlds’ to counter global injustices

Many of today’s intersectional movements engage in creating new stories about building what feminist political ecologist Diana Ojeda[4] calls ‘Living Worlds’: stories about how we must live and especially about how we must thrive in these precarious times. Indigenous scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer[5] urges us to work to change the world by prioritizing what she argued are the core features of building anti-colonial Living Worlds: raising good children, raising a garden, and raising a ruckus. They are ‘living environmentalisms’ of marginalized communities’ struggles for everyday life.

Di Chiro’s talk showed how social reproduction is at the heart of the environmental justice (EJ) movement. Social reproduction means not only care for children, families, and communities; it also means ensuring that you can breathe healthy air and drink clean water and that the places where you live, work, and go to school are free from toxic contamination. We learnt from her talk how sustaining everyday life should be at the heart of environmentalism and at the core of definitions of “sustainability.” In times of climate crisis and climate anxiety, it is important to understand how citizens can act and continue to resist, as well as flourish, in communities of care. Di Chiro’s pedagogical approach is, in itself, part of living environmentalism. She is among those environmental activists, scientists, and artists who write about what motivates them to act on social and environmental injustices, connecting their own personal stories to larger historical narratives and broader social and environmental issues.

References

[1] Di Chiro, G. 2017. ‘Welcome to the White (M)Anthropocene? A feminist-environmentalist critique,’ in S. Macgregor (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment. London: Routledge.

[2] Wichterich, C. 2015. ‘Contesting green growth, connecting care, commons and enough,’ in Harcourt, W. and I. R. Nelson (eds), Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies. London: Zed Books.

[3] See for example Di Chiro, G. 2015 ‘A new spelling of sustainability: engaging feminist-environmental justice theory and practice,’ in Harcourt, W. and I. R. Nelson (eds), Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies. London: Zed Books.

[4] Ojeda, D. et al. 2022. ‘Feminist Ecologies,’ Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol. 47, pp. 149–171.

[5] Wall-Kimmerer, R. 2015. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1719410637773{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]

About the author:

Wendy Harcourt is Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University in The Hague.

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Pros and cons of a women-friendly rideshare app

By ISS Blog Bliss 18 January 202415 December 2024 3265 views

As ride-sharing booms in Asia, women’s mobility is crucial. But it faces challenges like harassment due to the introduction of gendered strategies.

Ride-sharing platforms in Asia are thriving but their impact on women’s safety and mobility remains largely unexplored. This is concerning, given the prevalence of gender-based violence in conventional transport, particularly in South Asia where women face greater restrictions on independent mobility.

Enter Tootle. Research conducted in Kathmandu, Nepal, shows that the issue of gender has featured centrally in the business strategy of the Nepali-owned ride share company.

Co-founder and CEO Sixit Bhatta describes Tootle, which launched in 2017, consistently as “not just a ride-sharing company, the whole idea revolves around encouraging freedom of movement“. Tootle seeks to expand the freedom of movement, especially as Kathmandu’s public transport has been unfriendly towards differently-abled people and women.

Without questioning Tootle’s social justice concerns, the focus on women was recognised as a business strategy as women comprise at least half of the potential passenger population and constitute a dormant pool of potential riders.

Women are also underrepresented in paid work. In Ethiopia, for example, these observations have contributed to the launch of a ride-sharing platform (Seregela) which worked with women drivers exclusively.

Recruiting more women as drivers is probably the most effective strategy to increase the share of women passengers. Women drivers convey a sense of safety and security to women passengers. Tootle has built this factor into its ride-sharing app by allowing passengers to ‘choose‘ between men and women drivers.

However, attracting more women drivers is a challenge. The ride-sharing platforms seek to address this by championing women as drivers in their advertisements and by depicting ride-sharing as a women’s practice, involving women drivers and women passengers.

The platforms also publish success stories about women drivers that carefully weave together the benefits of being a driver with aspects of women’s conventional gender roles. Tootle also sought to attract women drivers by not charging them a commission (initially it charged men drivers a 4 percent commission).

Tootle not only creates its supply of drivers in gendered ways, following the theoretical premise that platform companies are ‘in the business of making markets’ it does the same for demand. For the public this is less visible; yet, probably more impactful. In its driver’s interface, Tootle represents demand for ride-shares in hetero-normative ways: customers are presented as either female or male.

Research in 2019 suggests that drivers (who are mostly men), indeed, use this to give preference to women passengers. For example, women passengers rarely complained about long waits. One woman customer who mostly used Tootle said: “I never had to wait more than 10 minutes for a ride-request sent.” In contrast, men frequently complained. One said: “It will be a pleasant surprise if I ever get a ride without waiting for more than 30 minutes.”

Allowing drivers to give preference to women passengers can be argued to make ride-sharing more women-friendly because it reduces waiting times for women.

Unfortunately, it also facilitates sexism.

A male customer interviewed referred to a response he got when he complained to a (male) Tootle driver who picked him up after a long wait: “You should feel lucky, because you are my first male customer [today]. I never give rides to males but only to females. Why would I become a driver otherwise — it’s fun having a female on the back of my bike.”

While in this specific case no woman was negatively affected, the driver’s attitude mirrors those collected online from women passengers reporting harassment by male drivers both during and after the ride-share.

These incidents happen despite compulsory onboarding of new drivers in which ride-sharing platforms instruct newly recruited drivers about avoiding unwanted behaviour.

New drivers are told to not tease women customers, to refrain from comments that could be interpreted as sexual innuendos and to refrain from asking women customers to sit closer to the driver, or to brake in such a manner that the body of the woman passenger touches the driver.

Across Asia ride-sharing platforms have significantly transformed urban transportation, including in gendered ways. The expanded choice and availability of transport options is good news, especially for those women looking for and able to afford alternatives to existing gender-insecure forms of transport.

Recruitment efforts targeting women as drivers has not only created new opportunities for paid (part-time) work for women, it also contributed to further shifts in gender norms in urban transport.

However, the gender justice argument put forth by Nepal’s ride-sharing platforms must be recognised as a business strategy. When platforms make markets in gendered ways, this creates gendered tensions.

Most notably, allowing driver selection based on the passenger’s gender seems beneficial to women initially but it encourages sexist attitudes and creates the potential for gender-based violence.

Over recent years, Nepal’s ride-sharing platforms have improved complaint and tracking mechanisms to combat sexism. Yet, the failure to increase the share of women as drivers delimits the inclusiveness of ride-sharing platforms. Improving women’s riders working conditions may be the surest way to address this.

This article is part of a Special Report on the Asian Gig Economy, produced in collaboration with the Asian Research Centre – University of Indonesia

This article was originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Roy Huijsmans is an associate professor of childhood and youth studies. His research focuses on young people in processes of social development, which includes the emerging platform economy.

Pritee Hamal is an independent researcher based in Kathmandu, Nepal. She holds an MA in Development Studies and Gender Studies.

Institutional care is an affront to rights of children with disabilities

By ISS Blog Bliss 28 November 202325 December 2024 1678 views

In solidarity to the 16 days activism against gender-based violence, this article highlights the structural violence that impedes the rights of children with disabilities —including girls— in Kenya. The author Stephen Ucembe, who is an alumni of the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, emphasizes the need to protect the rights of children confined to institutional care.

Image Credit: Hope and Homes for Children

Every child, including those with disabilities, is entitled to the rights enshrined in the Convention of the Rights of the Child which Kenya has ratified. As a country, we have agreed to uphold these rights through the Children’s Act 2022.

However, in contravention of their rights, children with disabilities are often hidden away in communities or sometimes separated and isolated in institutions against their wishes. Isolation from communities on the basis of disability is discriminatory. It is a dereliction of duty – an abdication of responsibility by the government. Supporting these children to be visible in our communities and families normalizes disability. Hiding them from others dehumanizes and perpetuates stigma and discrimination, hence exacerbating the problem.

Furthermore, unnecessary placement in residential care institutions often multiplies violations; children with disabilities are denied other rights, like the right to family and community care, to culture, to identity, to freedom of association.

A global Human Rights Watch report, published in 2017 titled, ‘Children with disabilities: Deprivation of liberty in the name of care and treatment’ documented that children with disabilities often face severe neglect and abuse. This included beatings and psychological violence, sexual violence, involuntary and inappropriate medical treatment, use of abusive physical restraints, seclusion and sedation, denial of education and denial of regular contacts with families.

An investigative media exposé traced how the problems described above play out locally. It uncovered multiple human rights violations perpetuated against institutionalized children with disabilities, by a government agency.

Nobody is seeking to romanticize families and communities. There are many children facing abuse, neglect and exploitation, including stigma and discrimination within family and community settings. However, studies consistently point to serious violations in institutional care settings. Moreover, over 80 years of research shows that supported families and communities are far better equipped than institutions when it comes to improvement of children’s overall well-being.

The primary role of government should not be to create more barriers, or spaces that deepen inequality and diminish inclusivity. Yet, this is exactly what we do when we institutionalize these children or neglect them in communities. The role of the government should be to ensure their protection and enjoyment of all rights, through full inclusion and participation in the community.

To make inclusion a reality, we need responsive initiatives that tackle ubiquitous stigma and discrimination. That starts with community services and facilities available to persons with disabilities, enabling them to access education, housing, rehabilitation and therapy. It extends to respite care centers that allow struggling care-givers time off, or time to go and work. And it means we must improve infrastructure and provide necessary assistive devices, aids and services, like hearing aids, crutches, wheelchairs, tricycles, white canes and walking appliances to support full participation.

Lastly, it’s up to us to ensure we do not leave these children behind in the care reform processes that the government has initiated. To support governments to include disabled children in family based alternative care, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities developed ‘Guidelines on deinstitutionalization, including in emergencies’.

These guidelines are meant to ensure an end to rampant violence against institutionalized persons with disabilities, including children. This advice should ensure children with disabilities are included and supported in families and communities, and prevent their institutionalization.

This article was first published on The Standard.

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Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Stephen Ucembe is the Regional Advocacy Manager, Hope and Homes for Children. He is a professional social worker with skills, knowledge, and experience working with children and young people without parental care, and vulnerable families. His preference is to work in Kenya, or regionally (east and southern Africa) with organization (s) whose mission and vision is family and child focused.

Decriminalizing sex work is a first step towards assuring rights and recognition for sex workers in Belgium — but it is not a silver bullet

By ISS Blog Bliss 26 October 202325 December 2024 3248 views

Each year, International Sex Workers Day celebrates sex workers’ resistance to the stigmatization, criminalization, and exploitation they face. This year, to commemorate the event, a seminar at the ISS discussed how sex workers’ advocacy resulted in the recent decriminalisation of sex work in Belgium. In this article, Marianne Chargois, Daan Bauwens, and Karin Astrid Siegmann discuss which further changes need to be made to ensure the dignity and rights of sex workers in Belgium.

We celebrated the week that concludes with International Sex Workers’ Day with an ISS seminar in which I, Marianne Chargois, member of the executive team of the Belgian sex worker union Utsopi, delivered a presentation titled “Swimming against the tide: Decriminalization of sex work in Belgium”. Decriminalization, a regulatory model that sees sex work as a regular profession and abolishes all laws that criminalize prostitution directly or indirectly, has been considered the best way to govern sex work because it helps protect sex workers’ health and well-being, enhances their access to services and justice, makes the industry safer, and, overall, improves the guarantee of sex workers’ human rights (Oliveira et al. 2023).

Until June last year, Belgian law criminalized services and third parties supporting sex work based on the understanding that all sex workers are victims of exploitation and human trafficking, independent of their own view of or consent to their situation. This could lead to bizarre situations where a sex worker’s accountant or even his or her child — basically anyone supporting sex workers — could be, accused of ‘profiting from the exploitation of sex work’ and could be fined or imprisoned for pimping.

Decriminalization is an important first victory

Utsopi has fought against these stipulations since 2015, and last year, the union won! Taking a seat at the negotiating table in the Belgian Ministry of Justice first of all made it possible for sex workers to argue that sex workers can give consent, stopping the infantilization of those working in the ‘adult industry’.

The revised law also defines pimping more clearly, so that normal economic transactions are not targeted anymore. Instead, the criminalized aspects are now more narrowly defined as the ‘abnormal profits and advantages from the organization of prostitution’ or the organization of sex work in disrespect of sex workers’ labour rights. In contrast to the earlier version of the law, this does not threaten consenting sex workers’ livelihoods. Rather, it enables them to access necessary things that are normal for all other workers, such as having a bank account, housing, or other basic needs.

But much still needs to be done

Yet, while important, decriminalization is just the first step towards the improved rights and recognition of sex workers — many other things still have to change. For instance, stigmatization and discrimination involve such high levels of symbolic as well as physical violence that the large majority of sex workers refrain from divulging that they do sex work. These hidden lives expose them to greater risk of exploitation, abuse, and blackmailing.

Broader social protection is required

Besides, Utsopi and its partner organizations are working with the government on the concluding phase of a labour law for the right to have an employment contract and guaranteed social rights. Directly after the reform in 2022, only independent sex work was possible in Belgium. Working as employees would enable sex workers to start benefiting from social security. This would for instance enable sex workers to go on early maternity leave, but also to cover their risks, which include sexually transmitted diseases, but also other risks that they face such as harassment or discrimination based on the sex work.

Cooperation from municipalities is essential

Apart from the national legislation, local governments can make it difficult to carry out sex work by imposing restrictive conditions. For example, some municipalities require sex workers to register, and locations for sex work often have to comply with specific regulations. Presently, there is still a lack of spaces to work legally and under decent conditions. Shared spaces, brothels self-managed by sex workers, or other possibilities still need to be created and guaranteed.

Migrant sex workers need to be included

Finally, maintaining a certain level of tolerance in sex work regulation remains necessary even after it has been decriminalized. Most sex workers cannot access existing legal entitlements. For undocumented migrants, for example, the lack of residence or work permits implies that abuses can go unreported out of fear of deportation. In fact, no decriminalization process is complete without entitling undocumented sex workers to rights. This also points to the ‘unfinished decriminalization’ of sex work in New Zealand. Being the first country to decriminalize sex work in 2003, New Zealand still excludes migrant sex workers from the ambit of the Prostitution Reform Act.

A regulatory ‘grey zone’ remains necessary

One complication related to the protection of sex workers’ rights is that for some, sex work is a backup to make ends meet in an emergency. This implies that these persons do not consider themselves sex workers and are, consequently, unlikely to claim associated rights and entitlements. To address these additional complications that sex workers face, a certain regulatory ‘grey zone’ remains necessary.

The decriminalization of sex work is not a silver bullet

These learnings from the Belgian experience add nuance and realism to the idea of decriminalization as the silver bullet for ensuring decent work for sex workers. Marjan Wijers, consultant, researcher, and activist in the field of human trafficking and sex workers’ rights, echoed this when discussing the Belgian reform. She highlighted the paradox that decriminalizing brothel-based sex work in the Netherlands in 2000 ushered in an even more restrictive legal environment for sex workers now based on administrative law.

Still, on International Sex Workers’ Day, Belgium’s ‘swimming against the tide’ was an apt celebration of sex workers’ agency to successfully challenge the legal and societal structures that marginalize and stigmatize them!

Note: Thanks to Silke Heumann and Maria Ines Cubides Kovacsics for their helpful feedback on and suggestions for improvement of this post.

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Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Marianne Chargois is a member of the executive team of the Belgian sex worker union Utsopi.

Daan Bauwens is the Utsopi director.

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

Mobilising for a Just World: Legal Mobilization for Whom?

By ISS Blog Bliss 31 January 202326 December 2024 2451 views

Both scholars and practitioners engaged in either researching or advancing legal mobilization recognize that law can be used to guide legal interventions seeking to trigger transformative justice. A persistent question faced by legal mobilization practitioners and researchers alike is: who are we mobilizing for, and with whom? As a member of the Legal Mobilization Platform (LMP), I sought to answer this question during the platform’s launch on 12 January 2023 in The Hague.

Who takes the lead in legal mobilization claims?

It should be a standard response that any legal mobilization claim should be led by individuals and organizations who experience violations. However, this is not always the case. The structure of the legal profession often obscures the agency of those whose rights have been violated. Contradicting the approach of Systemic Justice, those who are centred in strategic litigation are often the NGOs and law firms – however well-intended – that are officially presenting a particular claim, rather than the communities and individuals affected by violations.

As a researcher wanting to understand these dynamics better, but also as someone with a long history of advocacy in my earlier career as a human rights lawyer, it has always been important for me to understand the objective of a legal mobilization claim and to critically reflect on my role in it.

The Legal Mobilization Platform (LMP) is a large and broad platform of researchers and practitioners, where legal mobilization researchers and practitioners can interact with each other in a dynamic and reflective shared space. From the overwhelming responses we have received thus far, there appears to be a very strong interest in better understanding and reflecting upon which forms of legal mobilization work and which don’t to trigger transformative change. To give an example, LMP-member Systemic Justice orient their work around “community-driven litigation”. Their goal is

…to radically transform how the law works for communities fighting for racial, social, and economic justice. Centring affected communities in joint litigation, Systemic Justice will help broaden access to judicial remedies for those fighting for justice and equality. This will help dismantle the power structures that underpin and fuel racial, social, and economic injustice.

People can certainly be both a researcher and advocate. However, these roles are different: what researchers aim for are solid arguments based on a convincing methodology; for practitioners, the aim is for transformative change. Without being clear what one’s role is, one can end up being of little use to either scholars or to activists. Nevertheless, for both researchers and practitioners, being a critically reflexive researcher or a conscientious advocate may involve standing up for cause, just as much as it may be necessary to step back, allowing others to take up the research or advocacy space and above all supporting others, or what Aminata Cairo refers to as “holding space”.

Recognizing one’s privilege

The questioning of who represents what goes even further than this. Before deciding whether one has the legitimacy to either research or represent a cause, it is critical for one to recognize one’s privilege. Critical scholars problematize this from the fields of critical race studies, critical feminist studies and critical legal studies, such as TWAIL. From a methodological standpoint, it is critical to recognize one’s positionality in relation to both the issues and people that are the focus of research, as well as the importance of praxis.

However, even more crucially, social justice activists frequently insist on questioning who, and in what manner, individuals can credibly speak out on issues such as the Dutch slavery and colonial heritage, which is currently a topic of much debate in the Netherlands and a focus of the LMP.

The challenges of patriarchy, racism, elitism, and anthropocentrism

Apart from crucial matters of ownership and positionality, there are myriad institutional structures and systems that can pose challenges for legal mobilization practitioners to navigate. To begin with, the patriarchal character of law, legal process and systems, including universities and the legal profession, structurally privileges men. But this is not the only problem. Patriarchy also corrodes the way institutions operate, with a tendency towards non-collaboration, individualism, and a high level of competitiveness. Similarly, the racialized character of law, legal processes, and systems structurally privilege white people. We see this problem in efforts to accomplish gender diversity and inclusion, within the public sector, courts, and universities where racist stereotypes persist, and even within NGOs, as Doctors Without Borders has acknowledged.

Alongside patriarchy and racism is the elitist character of the law and legal process that systemically protects the interests of a handful of affluent people, the so-called 1%, allowing some individuals to acquire massive opulence that can eclipse the GDP of entire nations, while allowing ample opportunities to avoid the payment of tax, hindering the equitable distribution of wealth.

And finally, the law and legal process tend to be highly anthropocentric, which means that they structurally privilege humans and disregard non-human interests. Here we are talking about the rights of nature, which researchers such as Dr. Daphina Misiedjan focuses much of her research on.

All of this involves (or at least it should) a great deal of legal learning, which Karim Knio and Bob Jessop recognize are part and parcel of a pedagogical approach to understanding how crises, whether they be of a financial, social, or political nature, are construed and managed.

More than litigation

Finally, legal mobilization is much more than litigation alone. As Eva Rieter and I have argued, it is about many different uses of law, incorporating other confrontational forms, including, but not limited to, litigation, e.g. protests, corporate shaming, civic boycotts. But legal mobilization can also adopt cooperative forms, such as participation in policy-making processes, training courses on systemic racism awareness, and partnerships with municipal and national government actors and law enforcement officials to develop, monitor, and implement policies for tackling systemic racism.

In all respects, solidarity is key. Solidarity involves first and foremost, listening to those affected by racial, climate, and socio-economic injustice, which is not always easy for researchers and practitioners alike as systemic justice involves one fundamentally questioning liberal values that are dominant both in systems of law and governance, not to mention economic relations.

The future of legal mobilization

So how should one take these reflections forward in practice? A key strategy for tackling all of these dilemmas in legal mobilization practice has been demonstrated by Amsterdam-based member of the Platform Public Interest Litigation Project or PILP, which applies a broad understanding of strategic litigation and asks, “Where does it hurt?”.

Another example of going beyond litigation is De Zwart Manifest (“Black Manifesto”), which recognises that, according to the Dutch Constitution, “everyone in the NL is treated equally in equal circumstances”. However, “the reality is different. In the NL there is a racialized order”. In other words, the claim of the manifesto is not to champion equality, but rather to redress systemic inequalities, or what Gloria Wekker, a member of the Legal Mobilizational Platform, refers to as “radical equality”.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Jeff Handmaker is Associate Professor of Legal Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies and, together with Margarethe Wewerinke-Singh at the University of Amsterdam Law School, a member of the Steering Group of the Legal Mobilization Platform

Rebuilding the economy one home-office at a time: the pros and cons of working from the office

By ISS Blog Bliss 22 July 20224 January 2025 4913 views

Are we sure we still need to be in the office 40+ hours a week? The economy may suffer in the short term if we continue flexible working, but society suffers in the long term if we force a return to the office So, do we really need to return to full time work-from-office? I say no. Hear me out.

It’s 2022, and now that COVID-19 is not as serious a threat, we are collectively looking at figuring out how to move forwards (or backwards) to a post-pandemic reality. This includes the slew of opinion pieces we are bombarded with extolling both the perils and virtues of continued hybrid working (Hsu, 2022; Duncan, 2022; Sherman, 2022). It is time, therefore, to look at both the merits and consequences of not returning to the office.

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/tuesday-june-8th-work-home

Before doing my master’s degree, I was working in a large multi-national corporation in Singapore. As someone who had to work from home from November 2019 (read: before the global pandemic) because of a broken leg, but whose job required her to personally connect with as many colleagues as she could, let me tell you that working from an office is not the end-all solution. Before November 2019 I had been going in every day, and not once did I underestimate the power of working face to face in an office environment. However, working entirely from home didn’t stall my productivity either. If anything, the more flexible schedules allowed me to take better care of local and global relationships because I could catch colleagues at all hours of the day based on their own disparate schedules, and take proper breaks in between to deal with personal needs like physio and doctor’s visits, cooking, cleaning, or other household needs for myself and my family without scheduling set office hours or the pressure of commuting. The lack of travel to and from office, as well as huge savings on professionally mandated socialising via lunches, coffees, and drinks meant saving enough money that I was able to pay for my degree almost in full!

We saw during the height of the pandemic that our biggest collective fear is facing the consequences of the unknown, which is why the urgency we see from governments and companies in having people return to the office is understandable (Franklin, 2022; Lim, 2022; Forrest, 2021; Gordon and McGregor, 2022). It is far more comforting to revert to the familiar, and in this case, those in charge – from companies to governments, to university administrators – are keen to go back to what they know: physical attendance.

Let us give them credit: in-person connectivity has immeasurable benefits. To start with, an influx of staff back to office buildings will certainly help those businesses that rely on office spaces (think cleaners, the food and beverage industry [F&B], real estate), and by extension the families who depend on these businesses. In addition, it is undeniable that team rapports and knowledge sharing are built more effectively through face-to-face interactions. However, this is where the fallacy fails: it is misguided to assume office jobs are only truly effective when conducted from an office. Indeed, the pandemic has taught us otherwise, and forgetting this lesson will result in regressive consequences (Choudhry, 2020).

To be clear, no one questions the need to rebuild economies. This is a feat that takes both manpower and brainpower, but I would argue that the more of both we have, the faster and more efficiently we can rebuild. Working from an office once again limits brainpower to those who are able enough to reach the office in the first place (usually men, the able-bodied, youth, and for instance those who can afford or do not need childcare). In considering this state of affairs, we exclude hugely talented swathes of the community who, during COVID-19 were actually being given the opportunity to find employment through remote-working opportunities, including fully educated but full-time mothers, the retired and the elderly, and those with disabilities. Inherently, in forcing staff back to the office, we once again exclude these groups: fundamentally counter-productive to rebuilding.

It is true that maintaining a permanent hybrid working environment does pose risks, but inherently they are all short-term. The most obvious has already been mentioned – the financial strain on the office-dependent businesses and the families who depend on those businesses. By extension, businesses that have depended on in-person connectivity will also be affected, like the airline business. Just recently, British Airways announced the cancellation of 30,000 flights in 2022 alone (BBC, 2022). F&B and hotels are equally affected, as are their related supply chains (Jagt, 2022; Mijnke, Obermann and Hammers, 2022). But people and businesses are creative and resilient. They will find ways to reinvent the wheel and make it work for them. Indeed, considering the tenacity of human nature, we will endure – for instance, an option to convert existing unutilised office spaces into public utility spaces such as schools, day-cares, or temporary shelters with related shops to protect housing and living costs.

But for any of these to happen, governments and companies need to stop thinking short-term, and start considering the long-term effects of their actions. A full-time return to office spaces will result in an undoing of all the effort that went into repairing what this neoliberal, profit-centric, exclusionary, high-pressure system progressively broke in the past: from the strengthened family relationships (hello two-year lockdown!) to the healthier diets and more socio-environmentally conscious purchasing and living (home-cooking, supporting local shops, gardening, the upsurge in second-hand markets, a reduction in carbon footprint from reduced traveling). Talent from forgotten resources like mothers, the less-physically-abled and retirees can be reinstated in new forms, and the subsequent intellectual discrimination that has, until now, been a detriment to the economy can be renewed and utilised. The cost, therefore, of forcing a return to the white-light corridors, communal coffee machines, recycled air, and open plan desks will far outweigh the benefits of corporate camaraderie, social capital, and political protection. As important as it is to recognise the value of in-person work, it appears that, once again, companies like LinkedIn and Twitter appear ahead of the curve by suggesting long-term work-from-home options (Kay, 2021; Kelly, 2022). Perhaps the time has come for other institutions to follow their lead and see the value they derive in it. And perhaps in changing what an ‘office’ looks like, corporations can gain back some of the trust they have lost by putting profit over people for so long.

British Broadcasting Corporation (6 July 2022) ‘British Airways to Cancel 10,300 More Flights’, British Broadcasting Corporation, accessed 19 July 2022

Choudhry P (2020) ‘Our Work-From-Anywhere Future’, Harvard Business Review, accessed 19 July 2022

Duncan E (18 February 2022) ‘COVID has Changed the Way We Work and There’s No Going Back’, The Times UK, accessed 19 July 2022

Forrest A (3 August 2021) ‘Government Urges Businesses to ‘Ramp Up’ Return to Office this Summer’, The Independent UK, accessed 19 July 2022

Franklin J (1 June 2022) ‘Elon Musk Tells Employees to Return to the Office 40 Hours a Week – or Quit’, NPR, accessed 19 July 2022

Gordon N and McGregor G (29 June 2022) ‘As the Return-to-Office Debate Rages in the U.S. and Europe, the Matter is Already Settled in Asia’, Fortune, accessed 19 July 2022

Hsu A (5 June 2022) ‘The Idea of Working in the Office, All Day Every Day? No Thanks, Say Workers’, NPR, accessed 19 July 2022

Jagt R (2022) ‘COVID-19 and the Food Industry’, Deloitte, accessed 19 July 2022. www.deloitte.com/nl

Kay D (29 July 2021) ‘LinkedIn Allows Employees to Work Fully Remote, Removes In-office Expectation’, Reuters, accessed 19 July 2022

Kelly J (5 March 2022) ‘Twitter Employees Can Work from Home ‘Forever’ or ‘Wherever You Feel Most Productive and Creative’, Forbes Magazine, accessed 19 July 2022

Lim J (25 April 2022) ‘Some Firms Want Staff Back at Workplace, but Experts Warn Against Rushing Into It’, The Straits Times, accessed 19 July 2022

Mijnke F, Obermann W, and Hammers T (2022) ‘Impact of COVID-19 on the Hospitality Industry’, Deloitte, accessed 19 July 2022. www.deloitte.com/nl

Sherman A (8 March 2022) ‘Making Sense of Why Executives are Eager to get Employees Back in the Office’, CNBC, accessed 19 July 2022

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Niyati Pingali is currently completing her MA in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), focusing on governance and development policy. As a former corporate employee, she knows the cost and the benefits of capitalism and plans to dedicate her life to changing the narrative to ensure both people and the economy benefit equally: a feat that sounds impossible, but she knows can happen.

Transformative Methodologies | A reflection on collaborative writing across sex worker organisations and academia

By ISS Blog Bliss 2 July 20224 January 2025 5198 views

We – members of Empower Foundation – a sex workers’ rights organisation in Thailand – and two scholar-activists from International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS) in the Netherlands, reflected on our experience of collaboration in light of our search for social transformation.

About us and what brought us together

Empower Foundation is a leading organisation in the defense of sex workers’ rights, and is located in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It has almost 40 years experience of working with creative and transformative methodologies – doing community-based research which then feeds into policy proposals, that are brought to the attention of governmental and international organisations, such as International Labour Organisation (ILO). It models best labor practices in their own ‘Can Do Bar’. Empower is the space for sex workers to exchange experiences, organise and create ways, often using art and culture, to inform and influence society on many issues, including the harms caused by anti-trafficking policy and practices.

What brought us together initially was the interest in bringing insights from labor studies – Karin’s area of research – on the one hand, and gender and sexuality studies – Silke’s field of expertise – on the other, in conversation with each other, in order to explore how that could contribute to proposals for structurally improving labor conditions of sex workers. Our first paper was on analysing ILO discussions around decent work, and how sex work and sex workers have been systematically excluded from conversations around the decent work agenda. It was in this context that in 2014 Silke and Karin contacted members of Empower Foundation that Silke had met the year before at an event co-organised with Mama Cash at ISS.

Trying to make a difference in the way we collaborate

While Silke and Karin had an initial idea about the paper, there was explicit room for adapting the focus, approach, and language. Neither of the three partners had experience in this kind of joint project, so we had an open conversation about the ways in which we wanted to collaborate from the beginning, thereby establishing some common guiding principles – that we would explore how to go about it along the way, keeping in mind that the contribution of the expertise and perspectives of Empower was crucial to the paper, both in terms of the kind of knowledge that we wanted to produce, as well as in terms of the social impact that we were seeking, namely, to improve sex workers’ labor conditions. We also agreed that Empower’s involvement could be more or less, depending on their availability, while our shared preference would be to have the collective as co-author.

This conversation was particularly important given the previous negative experience of working with academics. Liz Hilton from Empower Foundation summarised: “We’ve had one or two earlier experiences with people who wanted to collaborate and that was really terrible. The whole premise of collaboration was theft, of stealing our work.” Liz mentioned the importance of being aware of the differences in our language – “…not just the difference between Thai and English, but also the difference between sex worker language and academic language. We don’t see this as an obstacle, but it will be an adventure!”. The problem with academic jargon, as Empower also explained in a preparatory note for a meeting of sex workers organisations at ISS that took place at a later stage, is not that sex workers are not able to understand it, but that it does not reflect their experiences or realities properly, and it often operates with implicit assumptions that are problematic.

One common assumption in both academia and policy for instance is the conflation between sex work and trafficking that occurs when using the term “sexual exploitation”, to refer to what in any other economic sector would be called either “forced labor” or “labor exploitation”. Moreover, even within academic language, there were many different ways of talking about sex work with important political implications. Empower has published a dictionary that provides many examples of such – often problematic – assumptions and disconnects that occur. So, one of the first things that Silke and Karin asked was: how does (or doesn´t) the language that we use speak to members of Empower Foundation? In which ways do they think we should change it?

We also talked about timelines, and the need to adapt those to the realities of the different parties involved. For Empower, this compared positively with earlier collaborations with academics: “Other people that we were collaborating with didn’t want to give us the time to properly translate, think, come back to it, put forward what we can do, will do, and what we think. They were very rushed. Everybody has deadlines, we know that, but their rush was quite rude. They were continuously trying to fit us into what they already decided.”

Final reflections

We co-authored the paper that came out two years later. Empower Foundation made a tremendous contribution to the paper by critically analysing the language used, and by bringing in the findings of the community-based research that Empower was conducting independently – both through previous research on the adverse impact of anti-trafficking measures, published under the title “Hit and Run”, and the study on “Moving Toward Decent Sex Work”. This contributed towards a very nuanced and very tangible understanding of what decent work and labor exploitation means for sex workers in Thailand, by looking at these not as a binary, but as a continuum and as multidimensional.

Finally, and most importantly, in this process we developed a relationship of trust, friendship, and deep appreciation that became the basis for our further collaboration.

Now, has this collaboration lessened the precarity and contributed to more decent working conditions experienced by sex workers, as our chapter’s title suggests? Probably not. Yet, in a context in which sex workers’ knowledge about their lives and work is continuously devalued and ignored, we like to believe that a respectful collaboration that challenges these hierarchies of knowledge, and augments sex workers’ own voices can make a small, yet, meaningful contribution to a changed discourse on sex work – and ultimately to more respect and rights for them.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Sex Worker Networking Zone at the International AIDS Conference 2018, Amsterdam.” by junomac is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Empower Foundation is a Thai sex worker organization promoting opportunities and rights for sex workers for more than 30 years

Silke Heumann is a Sociologist and Assistant Professor (Senior Lecturer) in the Major Social Justice Perspectives (SJP). Her areas of expertise and interest are Gender and Sexuality Studies, Social Movements, Latin American Politics, Discourse Analysis and Social Theory.

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

Sub-Saharan migrants transiting through Algeria: Migratory farm labor in Covid times

By ISS Blog Bliss 1 March 20224 January 2025 3609 views

The agricultural sector in Algeria relies on the informal labor force of Sub-Saharan migrants on their way to Europe. Interviews with migrants highlight their precarious conditions of life and work, worsening during the Covid-19 health crisis.

A migrant cycling through a wadi to avoid checkpoints. Photo: M. F. Hamamouche

Over the last few decades, the Maghreb has become a migratory space: in addition to its traditional function as a site of emigration, it is now a transit land for many migrants trying to reach Europe. Since many African countries are dealing with unstable political and economic situations as well as with climate change, the in-flux of sub-Saharan migrants has become a major societal fact in Algeria. While in the 1990s, this concerned only the Saharan regions, during the 2000s it spread to the coastal cities of the north of the Maghreb, feeding the local economies. Transit through the Algerian territory happens in stages and through specific corridors. Although transnational migration to Europe begins in a heterogeneous manner, sub-Saharan migrants reorganize themselves collectively during their journey. During different stages of their journey, migrants ‘recognise’ each other and cooperate, gradually creating a common history, an ‘adventure’: their migratory project is a collective one and brings them together (for more information on sub-Saharan migration through North Africa see the book “Le Maghreb à l’épreuve des migrations subsahariennes. Immigration sur émigration” edited by Bensaâd, 2009).

According to the report “Contribution à la connaissance des flux migratoires mixtes, vers, à travers et de l’Algérie: Pour une vision humanitaire du phénomène migratoire”, compiled by the International centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) in 2015, the province of Ghardaïa is an unavoidable transit land for migrants. They settle temporarily in order to accumulate the financial resources and information necessary to reach Europe. This reality is evidenced in the strong presence of migrants in the informal labor market in the Sahara, particularly in sectors with labor shortage, namely in agriculture, construction and public works. In recent years, sub-Saharan undocumented workers have become essential to the functioning of these sectors.

However, the introduction of a range of measures to limit the spread of Covid-19 has disrupted this migration process. In light of the context and our previous work with different rural actors, including sub-Saharan agricultural workers in the M’zab Valley, we explored how they dealt with the constraints posed upon them by the pandemic. In other words, how did sub-Saharan migrants experience the pandemic and the related lockdown measures? How did these impact on their work and which coping strategies did they adopt? We answer these questions by placing the experiences of young sub-Saharan migrants at the heart of our qualitative analysis. Because of the structural role of sub-Saharan labor particularly in Saharan agriculture, we focus on this sector and have made some recommendations for policy that could contribute to more a just development of this sector.

The M’zab Valley

The M’zab valley is located in the province of Ghardaïa, in the northern Sahara, about 600 km from the capital Algiers, and is characterized by the coexistence of two agricultural landscapes: the ancient palm groves created in the eleventh century and the new agricultural extensions created in the 1980s. The labour force is mainly composed of sub-Saharan migrants in transit.

This study is based on our work prior to the pandemic with agricultural actors in the M’zab valley. During the month of March 2021, 10 interviews were conducted with sub- Saharan workers in order to document their experiences during the Covid-19 crisis.The names of the sub-Saharan farm workers interviewed are fictitious in order to maintain their anonymity.

From Mali to Ghardaïa, a long and difficult journey

The Malian border is more than 1200 km away from Ghardaïa. The migrants we spoke to underlined the reasons for crossing the border. One of the migrants we interviewed, Djamel, 22, told us:

I left my country, Mali, because life is difficult and we cannot find work… In Mali, there is almost no work left because of the civil war and the pay is very low, around 3 euros for a 9-hour working day… the search for gold is hard work with a lot of risk, without guaranteeing any money at the end of the day.

Another migrant, Nassim, 24 highlighted the difficult conditions of the journey:

We had to walk for hours in the middle of the desert while avoiding the main roads in order to avoid the Algerian security service who are very present in the border regions… Algerian smugglers show us the way in exchange for money… So to pay for our journey from the Malian border to Ghardaïa, we are obliged to stop in certain towns to earn a little money… part of the money is used to pay the smugglers and the other part is sent to our families who stayed in Mali through an informal network of money changers… our families rely on us to provide for them.

One of the Malians interviewed, Karim, 23, said:

I am the eldest of 10 children… My father has a low income… he relies on me to feed the family… that is why the goal of going to Europe is not achieved quickly… We have to meet the needs of our families first.

Over the years, an informal network of money changers has developed between Algeria and Mali. As a young Malian, Said, 20, explained:

If I want to send the equivalent of 10,000 DA (± 63 €) in Francs to my family in Mali, I have to give 17,000 DA (± 106 €) to the trader.

The choice to settle in Ghardaïa and not in another Algerian province is mainly explained by family ties:

My older brother settled in Ghardaïa since 2014…he welcomed all the young men from the family and from our home village who wanted to embark on the adventure of migration…we need a stable focal point before we embark…because this is the person who takes care of us once we are arrive and waiting to find a job…he also puts us in contact with employers.

Karim added

My brother worked for years with a farmer-digger… when he went back to Mali temporarily, he gave me his contact… I came directly to him in 2019.

This choice to go and work in Ghardaia can also be explained by the need for labour, as explained by a young Malian, Yacine, 20:

I came here to Ghardaia because work is available and the pay is better… During my journey, I stopped first in Bordj Baji Moukhtar, a border region with Mali, where I worked for 1000 da/day, then I went to Adrar where I worked for 1200 DA per day (± 7,5 €)… here in Ghardaïa, we are paid between 1500 and 1700 DA per day (± 94 and 106 €).

Bypassing checkpoints during the lockdown

Migrants have taken an important role in the development of the national economy despite their irregular situation in Algeria. In case they are stopped, they risk being escorted back to the borders. With the Covid-19 health crisis, control has been reinforced, which has led migrants to develop strategies to avoid coming across the checkpoints. The 10 migrants we interviewed told us that they used secondary roads, wadis and mountains to move between their homes and workplaces. As Djamel explained:

I chose to work on a remote farm in Ghardaïa in order to ensure my safety…to get to the city center, if necessary, I cross the gardens and farms in order to avoid the controls.

This irregular situation makes migrants vulnerable. Some take advantage of the situation of Malian migrants by refusing to pay them when their work is completed, while threatening to call the security service. Migrants are also subject to repeated theft, not only by some Algerians but also by migrants from other countries.

As Salah, 25, confided to us:

I was attacked when I tried to bypass the town on the side roads. They stole my phone, my bike and my money for the day.

According to the same person,

attacks and thefts have increased since the beginning of the Covid-19 health crisis… These attacks are carried out with impunity… the aggressors know that we cannot file a complaint.

Gathering sites have been replaced by word of mouth and phone recruitment

Before March 2020, migrants looking for daily work used to gather in specific gathering points. Farmers used to come and recruit them in these places. However, with the health crisis and the reinforcement of checkpoints, migrants deserted the collection points. To find work, they could only rely on word of mouth and through phone contact, as Karim explained:

During the first months of the lockdown, when mobility restrictions were strict, I was able to find work thanks to my network of contacts. My former employers, who had kept my phone number, contacted me when they, their family or neighbors needed a worker”. Another worker, Nassim, 24, told us: I took the initiative to call my former bosses, one by one, to ask them if they needed a worker. Only the farmers responded positively to my request… the building contractors did not need any more workers since this sector was heavily impacted by the health crisis.

On the other hand, for migrants who arrived in Ghardaïa shortly before the health crisis, it was more difficult to find work because of the restrictions imposed by the government to counter the spread of Covid-19. They relied on their compatriots who had been in the M’Zab valley before them. As Adam, 18, explained:

I arrived in Ghardaïa in February 2020… I was able to find a job quickly and even during the lockdown thanks to a young man from my native village who has been living in Ghardaïa since 2018. He contacted me every time his employers needed several hands.

Some of those who did not find work during the months of the lockdown, relied on help from their compatriots:

I borrowed money from a friend… then I paid it back a few months later… fortunately there is mutual aid and compassion between Malians… in my opinion this is what makes the difference with other migrant nationalities (Ilyes, 19).

Turning to agricultural work and a strong demand for versatility

Migrants who worked in the construction and public works sectors before the health crisis saw their activity suspended when the lockdown measures were implemented in March 2020. This economic sector has been hit hard by Covid-19. To support themselves and their families back in Mali, some of them have turned to agriculture. According to Nassim:

Before the crisis, I worked mainly in masonry, but with the introduction of the lockdown and the suspension of all building activities, I found myself without work… I then became an agricultural worker because this activity cannot stop… The farmers needed us to carry out certain agricultural tasks: working the soil, irrigation, manual weeding, harvesting seasonal vegetables… we found work by word of mouth.

Agricultural tasks carried out by sub-Saharan workers. Photo: M. F. Hamamouche

Another worker, Salah, told us that he had been recruited to help clean out wells:

A friend, an agricultural worker for a farmer- washer, called me to tell me that his employer was looking for workers with knowledge of construction and public works to restore a dozen wells in an old oasis… I responded positively to this proposal because I knew that this type of work would last several months.

In addition, there was a high demand for multi-skilled workers during the lockdown period, as farmers were looking for Malian workers with skills in agriculture and construction, as was the case for Mohamed, 23:

When my employer called me on the phone to recruit me, he had asked me if I had any knowledge in construction, as he wanted to fence his farm and do some work in his secondary house so that his family could confine themselves… he had specified that the work also consisted of maintaining the garden… he had offered me free accommodation in the farm during the work as his family was not yet there.

More responsibility for skilled agricultural workers

Migrants who have been working in the agricultural sector in Ghardaïa for a number of years, have seen their responsibilities increasing in the farms, particularly in the phoeniculture sector. Indeed, the mobility restrictions imposed by the Algerian state to counter the spread of Covid-19 during 2020 have had an impact on the availability of skilled agricultural workers for harvesting dates. Traditionally, date harvesting in the M’Zab Valley, and particularly the harvesting of Deglet Nour dates, relies on workers from the Timimoun region, some 600 km away. The workers specialised in harvesting dates belong to a socio-ethnic group descended from the slaves who worked in the M’Zab valley. The latter were formerly called “khammès”, which means “sharecropper to the fifth” because they worked the land in exchange for a fifth of the harvest. Most of the descendants of the khammès gradually returned to their native region (Timimoun) after the 1971 land reform –a decision implemented to distribute land to landless peasants and to change the social status of the descendants of the khammès (for more information see Aït-Amara, 1999).

However, in October 2020, these skilled workers were unable to travel to the M’Zab valley due to mobility constraints. Consequently, Malian workers benefited from this situation. As Samir, 25, said:

I have been working as a farm laborer since I arrived in Algeria in 2017, and I never went near the palm tree until 2020…the farmers preferred to use skilled workers to harvest the dates which have a high market value…but with mobility restrictions and the low local availability of skilled workers, they turned to sub-Saharan migrants as a last resort.

Conclusions

In the Sahara, agriculture continues to be the main sector of occupation for migrants. However, its socio-economic role has evolved. It has gone from being a seasonal supplementary job in the traditional oases of the border areas, to an essential activity in new forms of Saharan agriculture.

Indeed, the unlocking of access to groundwater and agricultural land from the 1980s onwards allowed the development of large ‘pioneering front’ type agricultural projects, occupying new land and renewing agricultural methods and practices (see also the article “From Oasis Archipelago to Pioneering Eldorado in Algeria’s Sahara”, by Amichi et al., 2018).

In the Algerian Sahara, where less than 11% of the Algerian population lives (3.6 million inhabitants), agricultural development would not have been possible without foreign labor. Although irregular immigration is neither formalized nor controlled by the state, it has become structural to the functioning of strategic sectors and to the national economy.

Paradoxically, this pervasive reality, which puts immigrant agricultural workers in even more vulnerable conditions regarding their labor and health security and rights, is officially concealed, albeit tolerated to varying degrees depending on the area, the different sectors of the economy and the economic or political conjuncture. The ambiguity surrounding this migration (partially tolerated but not recognised) and the fragility of the conditions of residence and work, which inevitably lead to situations of vulnerability (e.g. blackmailing of employers controlled by the security services) are accentuated in times of crisis.

This situation more than ever highlights the importance of politically recognizing the rights of migrant workers and of taking action to address their needs. The migrants we interviewed told us that the conditions in which they are living and working are not dignified. The regularization of seasonal work and the allocation of work permits to foreigners would allow them to claim fundamental rights (social, economic and civil).

This issue of recognition must be given special attention by public authorities. A better understanding of the dynamics of migration and employment in Saharan agriculture can help to inform policies and regulations to reorganize the recruitment and employment of migrants and ensure decent and dignified working conditions. Policies must address the precarious situation of these workers focusing on providing them with proper housing, secure living conditions and health assistance. Moreover, little information is available on the impact of COVID-19 on the health of the immigrant workers.

This blog was first published in Undisciplined Environments.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Meriem Farah Hamamouce is a junior water management and agronomy researcher. She is the founder and manager of BRDA (Agricultural Research and Development office) and an associated researcher at G-Eau Research Unit (France). She also works as an independent consultant for the engineering office (ECA) in Algeria.

Amine Saidani is founder and manager of an engineering office (ECA) in Algeria and a Ph.D student in water sciences at IAV Hassan II (Rabat, Morocco) and SupAgro (Montpellier, France).

Human development and responsible guardianship of our planet must go hand in hand

By ISS Blog Bliss 29 March 202118 January 2025 3398 views

The recently published UNDP Human Development Report shows that we’ve come a long way in recognising the damage we’re doing to the planet and how intricately connected natural resource use and poverty are. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities and poor living conditions, making it clear that we don’t have time to waste in addressing the double challenge of environmental and social injustice. We now have an opportunity to change things for the better – if only we seize this opportunity together, writes Kitty van der Heijden, Director-General for International Cooperation at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

United Nations Development Programme (2020) ‘Human Development Report 2020. The next frontier. Human Development and the Anthropocene’. United Nations Development Programme. Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr_2020_overview_english.pdf.

We are ruining the planet. This is the simple, yet scary message that the latest edition of the Human Development Report conveys. The 2020 UNDP Human Development Report titled ‘‘The Next Frontier” was launched in the Netherlands on 12 February 2021 through an online event organised by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and SDG Nederland.

During this event, in my keynote speech I stressed that we are in fact destroying the natural resources on which we depend – be it water, soil or a stable climate. We are entering the sixth mass extinction of species. We are using the atmosphere of this planet as the global sewer for greenhouse gases. And in a period of about 150 years, without intending to do so, we as humankind managed to change the properties of an entire planet’s atmosphere. That is quite an accomplishment for a bunch of fur-free apes.

In so doing, we are not only ruining our own future here in the Netherlands, but more importantly, we are losing the prospect of a life in dignity for the many poor and vulnerable communities worldwide that we have promised a better future. They are least responsible, and least capable of dealing with the impact, and yet this is where we are.

Over the past year, the COVID-19 crisis exacerbated multidimensional inequalities within and between countries that existed prior to the pandemic. But what the report truly shows is that inequalities and environmental degradation are not separate issues. We cannot eradicate poverty if we do not at the same time address the accelerating degradation of natural resources on which we all depend, but poor people even more so. Natural resources like forests, freshwater and fertile soils are often called ‘the only wealth poor people have’. They are essential for their survival.

Yet it is in no small part our production and consumption patterns, particularly from developed economies, that degrade and destroy such resources. Protecting the environment and combatting climate change is not a luxury. It’s not icing on the human development cake. Environmental degradation and poverty are inextricably linked. They are two sides of the same coin and they exacerbate each other. Together they are a truly toxic combination. If we do not change the way we use our planet, we will never be able to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And meeting these is essential for just, equitable and sustainable development that leaves no-one behind.

When you look at climate statistics, you might feel like pulling a duvet over your head and going back to sleep. Nevertheless, I am still optimistic. There is hope, and I will tell you why:

What is evident now was not so evident ten years ago

In 2012, I was involved in the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Around that time, the link between environmental degradation and poverty eradication was not recognised. Development experts considered the environment a separate realm. ‘Real’ development – to them – was working on health, education and malnutrition. Countries from the Global South thought that anything ‘green’ was an aid conditionality or a luxury – something you would do after development projects were completed. The environment was seen as a Western agenda.

In less than ten years, a broader understanding has developed that you cannot achieve human development without looking at durable usage of a country’s natural resources. This paradigm shift in thinking happened in a very short time span, which gives me hope for the future.

We are starting to take universality seriously

Development used to be seen as a foreign policy objective, as something you ‘do and deliver elsewhere’. We have come to realise that with global challenges such as water shortages, climate change or soil erosion, none of these challenges can be dealt with through development cooperation alone. In a globally connected world, we are linked through supply chains and terrorism, through climate change and communicable diseases, through the Internet and information systems and through migration and global media. We thus need a whole-of-government approach, because our global environmental footprint impacts people well beyond our borders, our trade policies may impede or enhance people’s ability to achieve a life of dignity, etcetera. And even more so, we need a whole-of-society approach. This means including the private sector, science communities, civil society organisations, and so on, in a holistic effort to bring about global sustainable development.

Solving these issues will require looking at our policies through the lens of policy coherence for sustainable development. Our actions here in the Netherlands as part of the Global North have an impact elsewhere. This realisation will hopefully speed up and accelerate an integrated pathway towards global sustainable development.

All proposals for law in the Netherlands are subject to an SDG test. But research shows that all developed countries can still do (much) better in achieving policy coherence.

The COVID-19 crisis offers an opportunity for change

The COVID-19 pandemic has set back human development tremendously. Decades of progress have been undone by the lockdowns globally, but especially in developing economies where shock resilience is low. Job losses, especially in the informal sector, have led to a steep increase in (extreme) poverty and malnutrition. Children are unable to go to school, and digital education is still a dream for too many. Too many girls will lose the opportunity to proper schooling – as they are married off early or fall in the hands of sex traffickers. Gender-based violence is on the increase. And it’s important to realise that this crisis in fact originated in environmental degradation, zoonotic diseases and rapid biodiversity loss.

Still … it may also be the best opportunity we ever had to address the planetary (or climate/environmental) crisis. Never before in the history of mankind has the public sector globally poured in this much money in relief and recovery programs to combat the impact of COVID-19. Never ‘waste a good crisis’, the old adage goes. If we use these resources well, we can keep global warming within the 1.5˚C limit (compared to pre-industrial levels), as well as the SDGs within reach.

The alternative is simply too horrifying to contemplate. If we do it wrong – if we return to the old, wasteful and polluting economy – the planet and mankind will suffer the consequences. Not just for the next 10 years, but possibly for the next 10,000 years.

Thus, the message of the Human Development Report that we must act now to combat both poverty and environmental degradation is crucial to keep the dream of a life in dignity for all humankind alive. The realisation of that dream depends on all of us.

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the authors:

Ms. Kitty van der Heijden is Director General for International Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Her responsibilities include development cooperation policy, implementation and funding. Central themes are gender, sustainable economic development, and climate policies.

Between 2014 and 2019, Ms. Van der Heijden has served as Vice President and Director Africa and Europe at the World Resources Institute in Washington. She served as the Dutch Ambassador for Sustainable Development from 2010 until 2013 and as Ambassador for the Millennium Development Goals in 2009. Before that she held several other policy and managerial positions at both the United Nations and Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Other positions Ms. van der Heijden has served in include a position as non-executive member of the board at Unilever NL (2014-2019), and Advisory Board positions at ‘Pathways to Sustainability’ at Utrecht University (2018-2019), the Global Commission on Business and SDGS (2016-2017), SIM4NEXUS (2015-2019) and Global ‘Planetary Security’ Conference (2015-2018). She was awarded the Viet Nam Presidential Medal of Friendship in 2009 and the Dutch National ‘Green Ribbon’ of Honor in 2013.

Ms. Van der Heijden (56) holds an MSc degree in Economics from the Erasmus University Rotterdam. She enjoys family time, nature walks and kick-boxing.

Seeds of resistance: Palestinian farmers fight against annexation and pandemic

By ISS Blog Bliss 17 July 202019 January 2025 3530 views

The violent Israeli encroachment and annexation of Palestinian land is compromising the future of the West Bank and putting its residents in an extremely vulnerable position. Palestinians are resisting both annexation and the Covid-19 pandemic by returning to their land and cultivating it, with the support of social justice movements. A concrete example of their contribution to Palestine’s rich agrarian heritage is a seed bank, whose hardy indigenous seeds are feeding people in the short term and protecting the climate and defending territory for generations to come.

It has not been an easy year for Palestinians, if there ever was such a thing. With the turn of a new decade in January, the U.S. administration unveiled the paradoxically branded calling for Israel to unilaterally annex about a third of the West Bank. Then the coronavirus slipped through the checkpoints into Bethlehem in March, sending millions of Palestinians into lockdown. And in April, Israel formed a unity government with an eye on the immediate annexation of the Jordan Valley in direct violation of international law.

The land grab is set to be pushed through this month, and many Palestinians worry that it could go largely unnoticed as the world’s attention is focused squarely on defeating the Covid-19 pandemic and curbing its economic fallout.

Palestine is often presented as an anomaly in global politics. Apologists of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories have been able to effectively present a narrative of exceptionalism by emphasising the relatively small size of this hotly contested corner of the Mediterranean, insisting that there are irreconcilable religious divisions. The fight against Covid-19 points to similar dynamics as the Israeli government has received lavish praise for its response to the pandemic within its own borders while letting it spill over into the occupied territories essentially unchecked.

In the context of crisis that has recently been compounded by the looming annexation plan and the health threats presented by the pandemic, social justice movements in the agricultural sector have elevated their struggles to new levels. Key among these endeavours are the protection of natural resources such as land, water, and seeds, as well as the ongoing struggle for the recognition of multiple forms of Palestinian sovereignty.

“Our response to the coronavirus pandemic has been to urge our people to go back to their lands and cultivate,” said Amal Abbas* of the Union of Agricultural Works Committees (UAWC), a small-scale food producers’ movement representing some 20,000 peasant farmers and fishers in the West Bank and Gaza. This Palestinian version of sheltering in place mirrors UAWC’s broader strategy of resisting occupation and annexation, work that it has been doing since 1986.

Settler colonialism, the invasive process that seeks to replace an indigenous population with an external one, has its own Kafkaesque set of rules upholding it in the Israeli legal system. An important example of this is a law that stipulates that if land is not worked for three years, it automatically becomes [Israeli] state land. The Israeli military has gone to great lengths to fold as much “idle” Palestinian land as possible into the architecture of the state. This law is used in part to justify the establishment and expansion of illegal Israeli settlements by means of violent evictions, home demolitions, the confiscation of cultivated agricultural land, and the separation wall.

Palestinian human rights defenders are working to flip this narrative and the overarching political project it sustains on its head. Farmers and rural workers in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip—just like anywhere else—have been longstanding agents of social change, and for this reason are among the most targeted sectors of Palestinian society.

This slow form of violent encroachment, together with the fast-tracked one of annexation that is on the Israeli parliamentary table with strong U.S. support, puts the future of the West Bank and its residents in an extremely vulnerable position. “The Israeli military has been taking advantage of our current emergency situation and accelerating its actions,” offered Amal.

Some of the most egregious actions taken by Israeli authorities in the current context of pandemic have occurred in the Jordan Valley, which is precisely the area they seek to annex. This area already falls under the classification of Area C, meaning that it is part of the more than 60% of the West Bank that is under full Israeli civilian and military control. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Area C is rich in natural resources such as underground water and fertile growing land. Not only is the Jordan Valley the unequivocal agricultural jewel of Area C, but it is also a strategic border with Jordan and a gateway to the Arab countries of the greater Levant.

Public services are in short supply for the Jordan Valley’s majority Bedouin population. That is why movements of farmers and workers like UAWC are filling that gap, providing basic services like water, sanitation, education, seeds, food, and nutrition. Even these services face relentless and aggressive opposition. For instance in late March, the Israeli military destroyed an emergency coronavirus field clinic that Palestinians were in the process of erecting in the northern Jordan Valley.

Despite these threats, UAWC and other Palestinian grassroots organisations visit elderly people and pregnant women in mobile clinics, distribute educational and protective supplies, and construct rooftop and urban gardens across diverse communities. This coronavirus crisis response work has largely been successful because it is a reflection of the kind of work Palestinian social movements continually engage in throughout the ongoing crises that occur under military occupation.

“Some of the best work that we are doing to fight off the virus and resist the annexation is through our seed bank,” said Amal. UAWC has maintained a seed bank since 2003; in it they safeguard rare heirloom Palestinian seeds that have been carefully passed down from one generation to the next. These seeds and the food sources they produce have a multiplicity of purposes. “Not only do our indigenous seeds make it easier to return to our land and protect it through cultivation,” Amal explained, “they hardly use any water and shield us from climate change.” She added: “And with so many still locked down because of Covid-19, continuous access to seeds allows people to feed their families and neighbours when it is unsafe to access food via the marketplace.”

UAWC insists on the importance of internationalism and solidarity in normalising the plight of the Palestinian small-scale food producers it represents. It is a member of the international peasant movement La Vía Campesina, which has taken a strong stand against colonialism and corporate control of agriculture and is active in 81 countries. Maintaining that important political relationship has allowed Palestinian activists the opportunity to host learning exchanges in their territories and also participate in those that take place abroad.

“Together with La Vía Campesina, we are using this opportunity to prove to the whole world that the global health care and food systems are not working and put forth our solution of agroecology as an alternative to the neoliberal model,” Amal explained.

Our contributions to the food sovereignty movement as Palestinians can help people understand that the occupation is about control over natural resources just like most other land grabs – Amal

Certainly, the militarised Israeli conquest of Palestinian territory has its own history, but it is also indicative of settler colonial processes that have taken place elsewhere, such as in the Americas, Australia, and South Africa. As this next phase of annexation plays out in the West Bank, against the distracting backdrop of the pandemic, these connections are critical. Far from an anomaly of the global politics of natural resources, Palestine has encapsulated them in a microcosm.

* Name has been changed to maintain confidentiality

This article was originally published on Open Democracy and has been reposted with permission of the author.

About the author:

Salena Fay Tramel is a journalist and PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, where her work is centered on the intersections of resource grabs, climate change mitigation, and the intertwining of (trans)national agrarian/social justice movements.

COVID-19 | How COVID-19 exacerbates inequalities in academia

By ISS Blog Bliss 1 July 2020 3587 views

[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1592900783478{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1592900766479{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: -10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]The COVID-19 crisis has brought to the fore gendered and racialised aspects of precarity that were steeping in academia long before the virus emerged. The increased burden of unpaid care work, still mostly borne by female academics, has skewed research output. Casualised staff, many of them early-career and/or international researchers, are expected to withstand the worst of the crisis, with their job security under threat. What action can academics take to challenge these negative developments? We need a post-pandemic vision, writes María Gabriela Palacio.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#f00f0f” css=”.vc_custom_1593430915072{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”17332″ img_size=”600×450″ alignment=”center”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#f00f0f” css=”.vc_custom_1593430944892{margin-top: -20px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]COVID-19 has illuminated deep-seated inequalities overlooked during ‘normal’ times. As we grapple with the extent and severity of the outbreak, we have been required to isolate and contemplate the cessation of economic activities. The fragility of our systems has been thrown into sharp relief, evincing that it is not necessarily the virus, but the lack of regulation and protection that amplifies inequalities among us.

What is work? What is essential?

COVID-19 gave us a new grammar to talk about what we do and how it is valued: essential and non-essential work. What we now consider essential work is the kind of work that our economies have systematically devalued. Health workers have been at the forefront of the response, with many women and minority ethnic communities at the lower tier of the healthcare system, working in underfunded systems without the necessary compensation and protective equipment. Many do work that is neither considered essential nor ‘work’.

Women’s unpaid work has increased as lockdown measures disrupted childcare provision and increased other care obligations. School and daycare closures have created new forms of stress and anxieties among caregivers (predominantly women), with a sizeable social gradient in the extent to which families feel able to support their children and provide home schooling. Within the academe, the drop in the number of papers submitted by female academics and the skewed distribution of research grants illustrate the increased burden of unpaid care work that women shoulder.

What work is valued? What is disposable?

This crisis intersects not only with gendered but also with racialised aspects of precarity in academia. As the pandemic rages across diverse geographies and international students defer entry for a year, higher-education centres face operational challenges, resulting in recruitment freezes, contracts not being extended, or the scrapping of research projects. Early-career academics on temporary contracts—many scheduled to expire this year—are anxious about their job security. International staff members are more likely to participate in casual employment, often unable to make any long-term commitments as their residency is attached to their work status. The experiences of international and ethnic minorities often go unheard in academia as they are less likely to participate in decision-making: non-white female academics are heavily under-represented in professorial positions across the Netherlands.

These elements show that diversity in higher education has not been accompanied by a change in normativity, with tangible consequences in terms of career prospects. Academics of diverse backgrounds encounter themselves having to working harder to be accommodated in their work environment (to fit in), for example by doing more service work and being less protective of their research time (if any), thus hindering their chances in the labour market. One could consider this a sign of an increasingly fragmented and market-driven academia that fails to recognise differences.

Doing what you love is still work

Most jobs that involve ‘doing what you love’ make it more difficult to assert one’s position and demand better conditions. It is often expected of academics to be intrinsically motivated and concerned about the wellbeing of students—and the vast majority indeed are. Yet, this expectation makes it difficult for us to demand better work conditions, particularly during a crisis like the one we face today. Support and care for students have become central to our online teaching. It is assumed that in the next academic year, most teaching will continue online, supplemented with some on-campus activities.

Though new forms of work are highly welcomed, they need to be accompanied by a reflection on how these new forms of work would be valued and compensated. We need a post-pandemic vision of our institutional setting while we respond to the immediate challenges of online education, casualised employment, and intensified work demands. This is a crucial moment to reflect and raise awareness about how our experience in academia is affected by who we are (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity, citizenship) and the challenges to measure and capture the value we create. What can we do to take action and tackle the privileges and systemic inequalities that this pandemic has illuminated? A first step would be to openly appreciate academics, as an online campaign at Leiden University using the hashtags #staffshouldstay and #koesterdedocent (‘treasure the lecturer’) is doing.

Another thing you can do is to engage in discussions within your faculty and/or programme to discuss how new forms of work derived from the COVID-19 crisis, e.g. mentor programmes, will be valued and compensated. Inclusion is central to such discussions: where would this work come from? Who will be asked? How would they be compensated? Because we as academics genuinely care for students, the conditions of and compensation for this type of work tend to become afterthoughts—and they shouldn’t.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#f00f0f” css=”.vc_custom_1593177038993{margin-top: -10px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]This article was originally published on the Leiden Inclusion Blog and has been written by the author in her capacity of Assistant Professor in Development Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Chair of LUDEN: Leiden University Diversity and Equality Network. This article is part of a series about the coronavirus crisis. Read all articles of this series here.
[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#f00f0f” css=”.vc_custom_1593177017606{margin-top: -10px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1593467094013{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]

About the author:

María Gabriela Palacio holds a PhD in Development Studies by the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS). Her research contributes to interdisciplinary work on critical social policy and it seeks to understand how state interventions shape social and political identities. Increasingly, her research interests have expanded to include the study of processes of exclusion within academia. She is the chair of the network LUDEN, tackling racism and other forms of exclusion at Leiden University’s working and learning environment.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

COVID-19 | Putting COVID-19 into context(s)

By Dorothea Hilhorst 15 June 20202 February 2025 6448 views

COVID-19 is a hazard, but does not produce the risks that we now see unfolding throughout the world, says ISS researcher Dorothea Hilhorst, who recently participated in a webinar organized by Humanitarian Knowledge Exchange platform Kuno to reflect on how the COVID-19 pandemic is being handled and what could be done differently. Here’s what she had to say.

COVID-19 is sweeping the globe and widely triggers top-down and centralised emergency measures. I don’t recall another crisis that has created such a response, even though the actual numbers of people affected have been very modest compared to many of the other crises we have in this world, including the lack of access to clean water, resource competition in mining areas, conflict and refugee problems, and climate change. In the beginning, I often found myself thinking if only the world would muster the courage to also address these other crises, and give them more priority than short-term economic gain.

However, it is also clear that there are strong limitations to the bold and robust responses of top-down emergency management. Firstly, I really resent how we seem to conflate the hazard of COVID-19 with subsequent risks. Yes, COVID-19 is a nasty and infectious virus. But it is not a virus that dictates that it should lead to widespread food shortages or increased marginalisation of the poor and vulnerable populations. These are spillover crises that relate to but are not directly caused by the virus.

These spillover crises are not just happening, they are let be by policy. When we signal the risk of food insecurity in the wake of COVID-19, I see agencies jumping to raising funds and stockpiling to feed the world. However, why don’t we talk about preventing this crisis? Why not focus on diplomacy to continue food exports from surplus-producing countries? Why not ensure that markets stay open and continue to function? Why not give peasants free range to go to their fields (at distance from other human beings) instead of locking them down in their houses?

Secondly, we have to be really aware about the many instances where governments have instrumentalised COVID-19 for other purposes, such as to curb the freedoms of civil society, to silence the media, or to undermine political opponents. Hungary is a case in point, where the government, under the pretext of misinformation about COVID-19, has closed critical media outlets. Authorities in many areas are seen to instrumentalise COVID-19 to increase surveillance and control, at the detriment of human rights and civil society, with rumours increasing the mistrust between people and their state.

Thirdly, while there is no doubt that top-down policies and expert knowledge is required to address the crisis, there are also indications about the limitations of this approach. Top-down approaches may ignore, stifle, or expire local coping capacities, social networks, and small-scale formal and informal institutions. Based on previous experiences and research, this may have grave consequences and render the COVID-19 response counter-productive:

Local institutions are people’s first and very often only line of defence against crises. Where top-down policies don’t reach out to communities to provide services and when people cannot rely on local institutions, they become increasingly vulnerable. Why close schools instead of mobilising teachers to help spread messages about personal hygiene in relation to COVID-19?
In areas where state-society relations are already characterised by mistrust before the crisis, there is a high risk that people will not believe the messages about COVID-19 coming from the authorities and will try to circumvent policies aiming to prevent the spread of the virus. A notorious example was found when the Ebola pandemic erupted in Sierra Leone: people sometimes hid patients to avoid their hospitalisation.
One-sided top-down policies can contribute to spillover crises at the local level, including crises of livelihoods and food security. This can lead to adverse coping mechanisms that actually increase the risks of COVID-19. There are signals that some women in the Eastern DRC who are prohibited to cross the border with Rwanda for their petty trade now resort to transactional sex to feed their families.

Let’s stay alert, or as we say nowadays, let us be ‘woke’ about these consequences of responding to COVID-19. The virus is a hazard, but does not produce the risks that we now see unfolding throughout the world. Top-down measures need to be linked up with bottom-up initiatives and coping mechanisms to effectively deal with the crisis.

Hilhorst’s discussion was part of a webinar titled ‘How COVID empowers local civil society organizations’. Other speakers included Hero Anwar, Program Director at REACH Iraq; Gloria Modong, Executive Director, Titi Foundation South Sudan, and Deputy Chair, NGO Forum South Sudan; and Feliciano Reyna, Executive Director and founder of Accíon Solidaria in Venezuela and representative of Civilis.

The entire webinar can be (re-)watched here: https://www.kuno-platform.nl/events/kuno-covid-cafe-how-covid-empowers-local-civil-society-organizations-in-the-south/

]This article is part of a series about the coronavirus crisis. Read all articles of this series increase surveillance and control.

About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a regular author for Bliss. Read all her posts here.

Title Image Credit: Gwydion M. Williams on Flickr

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COVID-19 | How ‘COVID-19 hunger’ threatens the future of many by Jimena Pacheco

By ISS Blog Bliss 12 June 2020 3529 views

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses and lockdowns continue, even more people are suffering from hunger and malnutrition due to their inability to access nutritious food. The pandemic has revealed the importance not only of alleviating immediate hunger produced by the sudden loss of movement and restrictions to economic activity, but also the longer-term effects of a lack of nutrition arising from the inability to access or pay for nutritious food during the pandemic. Children are particularly vulnerable: the lack of an adequate diet can lead to persistent losses in health, education and productivity that can have lasting effects. The after-effects of the pandemic could be more severe than its immediate effects, writes Jimena Pacheco.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that the COVID-19 crisis will expose 265 million people to the threat of severe hunger. The effects of the increase of hunger worldwide could be more catastrophic than the virus itself on the long run. Hence, it is of the utmost importance to implement policies that fight the pandemic from a holistic and intertemporal perspective, including the challenges presented by the accompanying hunger crisis.

According to the IMF, the global economy will suffer a downturn of -3% in 2020, pushing 200 million people out of employment.[1] In addition, millions of self-employed and informal workers will suffer from the abrupt interruption of their income flows brought about by illness or measures to curb virus transmission, including total lockdowns that prevent the normal circulation of people, goods, and services. In addition to the contraction of household income, the prices of cereals and other foodstuffs have increased as a result of trade barriers and difficulties transporting goods due to the lockdowns. As a consequence, we observe a deterioration in the nutrient intake of the population.[2]

Both the quantity and quality of calories are affected. The disruption in food markets has decreased access to vegetables, fruits, and proteins. These food products are labour intensive and need good storage and good distribution logistics, all of which have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis. In addition to supply shortages[3], the mobility restrictions and volatility of the price of quality food products, as well as sudden income cuts, have pushed households to consume more perishable, cheaper, and less nutritious foods.[4]

But not only the direct effects of interrupted distribution chains are visible in the nutrient intake patterns of the poorest populations. The most vulnerable populations usually live in resource-poor countries with weak fiscal finances, tight health budgets, and high debts. The coronavirus crisis has led these countries to reallocate resources to fight the pandemic, leading to the neglect or interruption of state-driven food programs. Children who were able to receive a square meal at schools can no longer do so, and food- and cash-transfer programs have also been interrupted. The WFP estimates that the school closures and mobility restrictions have prevented 368 million children from receiving meals through school food programs worldwide—a devastating observation. While some countries have ensured that children remain fed, there are no data available on the coverage and quality of those alternative solutions.[5]

Poor childhood nutrition has lasting effects

It is not only the immediate hunger caused by the COVID-19 crisis that is worrisome. The insufficient intake of nutrients during childhood increases vulnerability to infectious diseases, and starvation leads to premature death. Those children who survive are likely to face the lifelong impacts of malnutrition. Malnutrition during childhood generates changes in an individual’s metabolism to save energy. Furthermore, women who have suffered starvation during childhood are shorter and have a higher probability of giving birth to babies with a low birth weight. Besides, children who did not have sufficient nutrients during childhood perform worse in school and are less productive as adults. All these mechanisms that are being fed by coronavirus responses will generate long-term impacts that are likely to persist for more than one generation if we do not counteract the ‘COVID hunger’ now.

The way forward: immediate action and long-term monitoring

The need for timely and adequate policies to prevent hunger and starvation is pressing. Bodies such as the FAO and WFP have suggested a number of measures that can be implemented to combat immediate hunger and a longer-term lack of adequate nutrition linked to economic losses and poverty. These include:

Installing emergency cash transfers that smooth the income shocks of the vulnerable households
Assuring the correct functioning of food markets by decreasing barriers for food trade
Improving dietary quality, among others, by assuring the access to vegetables, fruits, and meat at affordable prices in local markets, or increasing the quantity and quality of school meals
Supporting maternal services by strengthening public health services, especially regarding the access to nutrition supplements
Promoting homestead food production.

However, the implementation of these recommendations does not seem feasible in countries that are resource strapped and already fail to invest in quality nutrition, healthcare, and food-producing agriculture.[6] We need commitment from governments and international organizations to allocate enough resources to fight hunger today in order to avoid future costs for society. Furthermore, we have to assure that the response to the ‘COVID-19 hunger’ and the monitoring of its effects persist long after the pandemic has ended.

Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Natascha Wagner for her thoughtful feedback on an earlier draft of this post.

[1] Also see https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/documents/briefingnote/wcms_740877.pdf

[2] The situation is especially difficult in urban areas, where households are unable to smooth the consumption shock through household-level food production.

[3] There are even more channels that contribute to rising hunger and lack of food supplies—the pandemic stopped the movement of migrant workers involved in harvesting activities, resulting in a loss of production for many farmers because of a lack of workers to pick vegetables.

[4] Nutritious food can be 10 times more expensive than basic calories as a result of COVID-19.

[5] For example, in Madrid, the municipality controversially signed a contract with a fast-food provider to cover the meals for vulnerable children. Health institutions and families have raised complaints about the nutritional quality of these meals that the children received for almost two months. See https://elpais.com/espana/madrid/2020-05-03/las-pizzas-de-ayuso-y-algunos-kilos-de-mas.html [in Spanish].

[6] World Bank data show that on average around 7% of a country’s GDP is dedicated to healthcare. For OECD countries it reaches 10%, while it is under 5% in Latin America and Southeast Asia. In the least-developed countries, the expenditure in healthcare is as low as 1% of a country’s GDP. See https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.GHED.GD.ZS.

Title Image Credit: Jimena Pacheco

This article is part of a series about the coronavirus crisis. Read all articles of this series here.

About the authors:

Jimena Pacheco is a development economics Ph.D. candidate at the ISS. Her research interests rely in development, health and education economics. Currently, she is working in the impact of negative shocks -economic and natural crisis- in human capital formation in Ecuador and Spain as main cases.