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Prentice Microenterprise for Critique FINAL 2016.pdf (270.23 kB)

Microenterprise development, industrial labour, and the seductions of precarity

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 00:39 authored by Rebecca PrenticeRebecca Prentice
Microenterprise development is underpinned by an ideology that the solution to poverty is the integration of the poor into market relations. This article addresses the paradox that its ‘beneficiaries’ may be dispossessed industrial workers who already have a long history of participation in the capitalist economy. Exploring the transformation of garment workers in Trinidad from factory employees to home-based ‘micro-entrepreneurs’, I argue that working conditions and labour rights have deteriorated under the protective cover of seemingly laudable policies to promote economic empowerment via self-employment. Showing how microenterprise initiatives contribute to women workers’ ‘adverse incorporation’ (Phillips, 2011) into global production networks, this article calls for renewed attention to the labour politics of microenterprise development.

Funding

Wenner-Gren Foundation

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Critique of Anthropology

ISSN

0308-275X

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Issue

2

Volume

37

Page range

201-222

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-03-23

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-04-04

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-03-23

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