Why Work? Do We Understand What Motivates Work-Related Decisions in South Africa?

Jeske, Christine

doi:10.1080/03057070.2018.1403219

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…These sentiments echo discourses noted in other literature, such as negative societal stereotypes of unemployed youth being 'lazy' (Jeske, 2018), and 'nostalgia' for a more stable past (Reed, 2016) when unemployment and decreasing marriage rates wasn't so pronounced. Discussions in the village among a few of the elderly suggested that new democratic rights post 1994, such as discourses of 'children's rights', undermined the 'old' social order, but there were few concerns that the CSG diluted 'culture', in contrast to Dubbeld's (2013) findings from Kwazulu-Natal.…”

Section: Inter-generational Relationssupporting

confidence: 54%

‘That Child Support Grant Gives Me Powers’ – Exploring Social and Relational Aspects of Cash Transfers in South Africa in Times of Livelihood Change

Granlund

Hochfeld

2019

The Journal of Development Studies

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This article builds on existing literature on the material effects of cash transfers. It explores people's own perceptions of the role of unconditional cash transfers in building, maintaining, and transforming social relations in a small village in rural South Africa. Much of the literature studying the impacts of cash transfers in the global South relies on quantitative measures. Thus, there is a paucity of micro-level qualitative research on beneficiaries' own perspectives on the social impacts of cash transfers. To this end, we explored whether the Child Support Grant, a small cash transfer given to impoverished caregivers of children, changed individual and intra-household relationships, as well as community solidarity in this village. We argue that South Africa's cash transfers have largely had positive social transformative effects on individuals, in relation to a sense of dignity, autonomy and increased decision-making powers for primary caregivers, usually mothers or grandmothers. Positive effects were also perceived in relation to these households and communities, although some contested effects and limitations were also found. These findings are of interest in the ongoing broader debates around the effects of cash transfers globally as well as regionally in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Section: Inter-generational Relationssupporting

confidence: 54%

‘That Child Support Grant Gives Me Powers’ – Exploring Social and Relational Aspects of Cash Transfers in South Africa in Times of Livelihood Change

Granlund

Hochfeld

2019

The Journal of Development Studies

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“…Succumbing to such work inspires a sense of despair. This is not purely a matter of sufficient livelihood: pay is also important to workers as a signifier of employers’ respect (Jeske 2018). The experience of being (dis)respected at work and the (in)ability to provide sufficiently for dependants are key factors in whether South Africans are willing and able to pursue and retain work (Dawson 2019).…”

Section: The Exploited Foreigner: Those Who Labour Without Moneymentioning

confidence: 99%

Labour, laziness and distribution: work imaginaries among the South African unemployed

Dawson¹,

Fouksman²

2020

Africa

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A wealth of new writing has emerged around the future of labour, focusing on thinking beyond employment in imagining the futures of ‘surplus populations’ no longer needed by labour markets. These new imaginaries include radically expanded forms of redistribution, such as unconditional cash transfers or universal basic income. But what are the views of the ‘surplus populations’ themselves? This article uses ethnographic research in an informal settlement in South Africa to understand why the unemployed or precariously employed poor are themselves often reluctant to delink labour and income. In particular, we focus on the discursive use of ‘laziness’ by urban unemployed young men. The varied (and often contradictory) ways in which these men employ the laziness discourse sheds light on the logics linking waged work and money in our informants’ social imaginaries. It illuminates the underlying contradictions and complexities of such logics, including those of gender, relational obligations, expectations of citizenship, and the inevitable tensions between aspirational hopes and economic realities. To begin thinking ‘beyond the proper job’, to use Ferguson and Li's phrase, we must unravel and understand such nuanced logics that continue to bind together hard work, deservingness and cash – even for those left out of labour markets.

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“…The other reasons cited included hard or dangerous physical labor (8), conflict among coworkers (8), pursuing higher education (5), wanting more or fewer hours (4), starting a better job (3), paid dehumanizing wages (3), and being given unrealistic job duties (3) (Jeske ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

People refusing to be wealth: What happens when South African workers are denied access to “belonging in”

Jeske

2020

Economic Anthropology

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Research on wealth-in-people has proven useful for studying relationships between employers and employees in capitalist systems, but scholars have largely ignored an idea introduced alongside the concept of wealth-in-people in Igor Kopytoff and Suzanne Miers's foundational 1977 study. Namely, these authors describe a continuum of ways in which people who are "wealth" to others become either included into or excluded from the groups benefiting from and controlling that wealth. In this article, I use that continuum to examine workplace relationships in South Africa that fall on the exclusion end of the continuum, where discrimination, lack of training and advancement opportunities, and bureaucratic distancing prevent workers from "belonging in" workplace power structures. Drawing on twelve months of fieldwork in low-wage workplaces and surrounding communities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, I argue that many workers in such settings respond by withholding their loyalty from employers, thereby limiting the extent to which they will "belong to" employers as wealth-in-people. This article sheds light on a popular discourse in South Africa and elsewhere that has criticized low-waged and unemployed workers for refusing to be model workers. Such workers follow a logic of refusing to "belong to" when they are denied opportunities to "belong in," thereby heightening one form of estrangement while potentially resisting another.

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Why Work? Do We Understand What Motivates Work-Related Decisions in South Africa?

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

‘That Child Support Grant Gives Me Powers’ – Exploring Social and Relational Aspects of Cash Transfers in South Africa in Times of Livelihood Change

‘That Child Support Grant Gives Me Powers’ – Exploring Social and Relational Aspects of Cash Transfers in South Africa in Times of Livelihood Change

Labour, laziness and distribution: work imaginaries among the South African unemployed

People refusing to be wealth: What happens when South African workers are denied access to “belonging in”

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