Street Papers, Work and Begging: ‘Experimenting’ at the Margins of Economic Legitimacy

Cockburn, Patrick

doi:10.1080/17530350.2013.837630

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Homeless street press points to the material realities of poverty, and the need for informal income accrual outside of the formal employment market. They are also illustrative of contemporary cultures of care/consumption, in which acts of charity or care can be carried out in a highly individualized exchange culture, and through the purchase of commodities (see also Lindemann ; Cockburn ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, across these differences, homeless street press are common in their provision of legal income for those who are otherwise excluded from the labour market (ibid). This is a highly precarious form of legitimate income, existing on the margins of economic legitimacy (Cockburn ).…”

Section: Homeless Street Press: Purchasing Povertymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, across organizational differences, homeless street press is a form of labour with complex links to the contemporary dynamics of deservingness. Homeless street press have effectively created an exchange market, in which social action on poverty and homelessness is tied to consuming a commodity (see Cockburn ; Zizek ). It is by all accounts a ‘step up’ from begging, and thereby is accompanied with notions of deservingness as well as points of distinction.…”

Section: Homeless Street Press: Purchasing Povertymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The economy of smiles: affect, labour and the contemporary deserving poor

Gerrard

2018

British Journal of Sociology

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This paper examines the affective dimensions of new forms of informal entrepreneurial work carried out in spaces of unemployment. Situating the analysis within contemporary scholarship on deservingness and on affect and labour, I shed light on the forms of entrepreneurial labour that rely upon affect-driven economies of exchange underpinned by moral judgements of deservingness, value and worth. In particular, this paper draws on a multi-city (Melbourne, London, San Francisco) study of homeless street press sellers (The Big Issue and Street Sheet) to explore the ways in which contemporary practices of charity and care are carried out through individualized market-place exchanges. Sellers' accounts of their work reveal how smiling and being (or looking) happy is a performative expectation that must be managed in the face of poverty and precarity.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Homeless Street Press: Purchasing Povertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Homeless Street Press: Purchasing Povertymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The economy of smiles: affect, labour and the contemporary deserving poor

Gerrard

2018

British Journal of Sociology

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“…For sellers of The Big Issue , this form of work sits on the margins of mainstream employment, connected to broader practices of ‘homeless street press’, requiring sellers to ‘sell’ their poverty effectively (see Cockburn, 2014; Lindemann, 2006). Sellers are not waged employees, but are effectively sub-contractors as they work for themselves on a piecemeal basis, buying The Big Issue magazine at half the sale price, thereby earning half of the sale when selling on to the public (at the time of the research The Big Issue cost the public £2.50, thereby making vendors £1.25 per sale).…”

Section: Making Class On the Margins: Producing Affective Commoditiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Class, affective labour and exploitation: Unemployment and the creation of work on the margins

Gerrard

Farrugia

2020

The Sociological Review

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This article examines the articulation of class and affective labour in the creation of work for the unemployed. Bringing together two sets of interlinking literature on work, class and subjectivity – the proliferating and increasingly popular literature on affective labour and the highly influential Bourdieusian inspired sociologies of class – we argue for closer research attention to the specificities of exploitation in contemporary experiences of paid employment. To do this, we draw on in-depth research on the informal work created by the social enterprise The Big Issue. This research demonstrates the ways in which affective labour is enacted through the productive exchange of commodities and the cultivation of particular worker dispositions. In the process, the homeless and long-term unemployed are positioned as productive workers and classed subjects through the disciplinary requirements of this form of affective labour.

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Introduction

Cockburn¹

2018

The Politics of Dependence

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Street Papers, Work and Begging: ‘Experimenting’ at the Margins of Economic Legitimacy

Cited by 10 publications

References 23 publications

The economy of smiles: affect, labour and the contemporary deserving poor

The economy of smiles: affect, labour and the contemporary deserving poor

Class, affective labour and exploitation: Unemployment and the creation of work on the margins

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