Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection

Today, our show reaches its final episode. So we decided to do something different to mark this date. This time around, I will be the guest and I will reflect about the learnings I have made over the past 7 years of this podcast. To have this conversation, I invited WIEGO’s Social Protection Programme Director Renata Nowak-Garmer. A brief introduction: before joining WIEGO, Renata has worked for t...

In this episode, we conclude the building block of delivery and provision of social protection from our social protection solar system. After discussing the role of informal workers’ organizations in the delivery of childcare and healthcare, in this third and final episode of the series, we will talk about the role of informal workers organizations in the delivery of social security benefit for wo...

In this episode, we resume the building block of our social protection solar system on the topic of delivery and provision of social protection. In this second episode of the series, we will turn to India, to understand how informal workers organizations can play an important role to improve access to their members by facilitating the last mile delivery of services or benefits. The Self-Employed W...

In this episode we take a pause from the discussion around delivery and provision of social protection benefits and take a fresh look at the challenges to finance social protection in a time of very deep transformations in the world of work. Among these changes, we have increasing automation, swift advances in artificial intelligence and the emergence of forms of capital-labour relations through t...

In this episode, we start a new building block of our social protection solar system with the first part of the topic on delivery and provision of social protection. We will be looking at the innovations in the delivery of services and cash grants, focusing on informal workers and on the role that informal workers organizations might have in improving access to these workers by facilitating the la...

In the fourth and last episode of the governance building block we dive into the discussion of social dialogue and social protection for informal workers. But what does social dialogue actually mean? How can in be used as a tool to improve social protection schemes to better include informal workers? What are the aspects we should look at when analysing these spaces and what are the main barriers...

In the third episode of the governance building block we move on to the discussion of legal frameworks and social protection. How can legal provisions of participation, access to information, transparency and equality be leveraged to include those workers into social protection systems? What are the main legal frameworks? How does administrative justice work for this end and how it can be used a t...

In the second episode of the governance building block we continue to discuss the issues surrounding digitization and social protection. This time, we take a political economy perspective to understand the interests, ideas, actors and policy implications of digitization. To help us understand this complex issue, we invited again Ruth Castel-Branco, Ruth is a Senior Researcher at the Southern Centr...

In this episode, we start a new building block of our social protection solar system with the first episode on the topic of governance. We have invited two guests to lay the groundwork for this block, to help us understand social protection governance, as well as the new concerns and potentials brought by digitization. We start with Tony Roberts. Tony is a researcher based at the Institute of Deve...

In the third episode of the registration block we travel to Latin America to take a regional overview of this issue regarding domestic workers. To learn the challenges these workers face to be registered, the positive experiences, as well as the opportunities and limitations digital technology tools offer in this task, among other issues revolving around registration for domestic workers in Latin...

In episode five of the systems’ mapping, building blocks approach, we continue to explore the topic of registration. This time, we look closely at the Cambodian IDPoor programme, to understand to what extent a government-led effort to improve how beneficiaries of social assistance and social protection schemes are effectively accounted for – and what are the gaps, challenges and merits of this new...

And we start the year with the first episode of the second building block of our new season, in which we will discuss the issue of registration. How is digital technology helping to include informal workers into social protection schemes or how is it creating new barriers for these people to access protection? What are the risks and opportunities? What is the role of informal workers organisations...

This is the third and last episode of the financing building block. Previously, we discussed alternative ways to finance social protection extension for waste pickers in India and Argentina, and the struggle to finance gig workers in Rajasthan. Now we explore the challenges of financing social protection in a changing world of work. What are the possible paths, strategies and innovations countries...

The current episode is the second of this new season. We will continue to look at the issue of financing, which was the topic of the first episode of the system’s mapping series. We will talk about a very important theme: how to finance the inclusion of gig workers from digital platforms of service provisions in social protection system. We turn our attention to the Indian State of Rajasthan, wher...

WIEGO inaugura una nueva etapa de su podcast. A partir de este episodio, vamos a comprender mejor las piezas del sistema de protección social, para poder mejor comprender los retos, oportunidades y dificultades que enfrentan los trabajadores informales. Todo eso ofreciendo la perspectiva de los trabajadores, desde una aproximación ascendente. En esta etapa, daremos atención especial al tema de la...

WIEGO starts a new phase of its podcast. From this episode onwards, we will gain a better understanding of the pieces of the social protection system, in order to better understand the challenges, opportunities and difficulties faced by informal workers. All this by offering the workers' perspective, from a bottom-up approach. At this stage, we will give special attention to the issue of digitalis...

In 2021, WIEGO has launched the project “Challenging the global orthodoxies which undermine Universal Social Protection”. In a nutshell, the project aimed to examine some of the dominant ideas in the field of social protection that were hindering the concrete inclusion of informal workers in these schemes. Exactly one year ago, I invited the coordinator of this project, Florian Juergens-Grant, to...

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the world in many ways. People all around the globe had to adapt to this new reality, and it was no different for informal workers leaders that struggle to improve their organizational strength. Capacity building, one of the key aspects to increase the voice and visibility of workers, also had to be done differently. Traditional, in person events, such as exchang...

In India, the government has set a huge undertaking: to register 380 million informal workers on a new database, so that it could allow the delivery of social security payments. This database, called e-Shram, was launched in August 2021. But, of course, this initiative was followed by a range of doubts, problems and barriers that has been hindering the implementation of this social registry system...

Social and Solidarity Economy has got into a very high place in the international agenda. This year, SSE, as it is called, was the theme of the International Labour Conference, in which workers representatives, government officials and employers representatives have gathered to discuss this alternative form of organizing production, distribution and consumption. One of the main outcomes of the con...

In the episode 20 of our podcast, we discussed the first round of the WIEGO longitudinal survey, conducted in 2020. In this special episode, we will discuss the report of the second round of this global survey. In this stage, 11 cities around the globe were part of the research that explored how the fallout of the pandemic affected informal workers’ income, working hours, access to healthcare, but...

For decades, domestic workers have struggled to be recognized and to enjoy the same rights as other workers – including social protection rights. There has been significant progress over the past few years, as the workers’ movement pressured in national and international forums to have labour and social protection rights enshrined in their legal system. The ILO Convention-189 and the ratification...

Over the last few years, universal social protection and the government responses to the Covid-19 crisis has generated important debates in the field of social protection. The Universal Social Protection 2030 framework, for instance, has gained support from a variety of key social protection stakeholders, including national governments, the ILO, IMF, World Bank, and other United Nations agencies,...

The last two years have brought a huge challenge to social protection systems around the world as the pandemic hit and shed light to the need of strengthening social insurance policies to protect workers against shocks that affected their livelihoods. We look at the case of South Africa’s Unemployment Insurance Fund (or UIF) and Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (better known as TERS) to a...

For the past two years, the world has been facing one of the biggest challenges of our lifetime, with the Covid-19 crisis. In this last episode of the year, we invited again Laura Alfers, the Social Protection programme coordinator at WIEGO, and Rachel Moussié, deputy coordinator of the Social Protection programme and head of the Child Care initiative, also here at WIEGO, to discuss the way in whi...