Labor in a Globalizing City

Simone Buechler, PhD is an assistant professor in Latin American and Latino Studies. She received a PhD from the Department of Urban Planning at Columbia University, where she studied under Saskia Sassen and Peter Marcuse. She was a post-doctoral fellow with the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University under Prof. Stiglitz after finishing a faculty fellowship in Metropolitan Studies at New York University. Before, she worked with the United Nations Development Fund for Women and US President Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham Sutoro, setting up a coalition of micro-credit lenders. Since 1996 she has conducted extensive ethnographic and statistical research on the impact of economic globalization on low-income women in São Paulo. Her previous publications include chapters in The Global City Reader and Deciphering the Global and an article on Bolivian sweatshops in São Paulo in Latin American Perspectives. In addition, she has conducted research on the effect of the financial crisis on Brazilian immigrants in Newark, NJ and on declining levels of inequality in São Paulo.

• Introduction.- The Spectrum of Voices in the São Paulo Economy.- Six Industrial Case Studies: Internal and External Flexibilization and Technological Change.- The History, Politics, and Economies of Three Communities and their Inhabitants.- Outsourcing Production and Commerce: A Close Examination of Unregistered Salaried Workers, Sweatshop Workers, Homeworkers and Ambulant Vendors for Firms.- The Increasingly Precarious Nature of Self-Employment.- “Destiny is not set in stone”: Social Actors, Cooperatives, and Local Coalition-Building.- Conclusion.