Kendra Strauss is a feminist geographer. She is an Associate Professor and Director of the Labour Studies Program, and Associate in the Department of Geography, at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Address: Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Crises of seniors’ care in countries like the UK and Canada, further highlighted by the COVID-19 ... more Crises of seniors’ care in countries like the UK and Canada, further highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, have been connected to processes of privatization and financialization. In this paper I argue that rent theory is important for disaggregating mechanisms, including of accumulation by dispossession, the devaluation of labour, and assetization, that underpin the process of financialization in the sector. Work on rents often divides between critical approaches, especially to land rent, and mainstream institutionalist and public choice approaches to rent-seeking. Critical rent theory is evolving beyond this divide to understand a broader range of types of rent. Yet, despite attention to the increasing importance of economic rents and forms of rentierism, labour and social reproduction are often excluded from the analysis of how rent relations arise. This paper demonstrates the problems with these exclusions. The argument is illustrated through an analysis of the restructuring of e...
This final report highlights the increasing attention to precarity, including academic precarity,... more This final report highlights the increasing attention to precarity, including academic precarity, within geography. After briefly discussing the implications for approaches to agency, I argue for attention to debates about racialized and racial capitalism from labour geographers. I suggest that theorizations of racial capitalism emerge from particular standpoints, and that geographers are well placed to explore racial capitalisms in a plural sense if we are willing to grapple with the standpoints from which we theorize in labour geography itself. I draw on the ‘infrastructural turn’ to illustrate how labour geographers can start to think with relational approaches to racial capitalism.
... in our application to the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for a DPhil CASE awa... more ... in our application to the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for a DPhil CASE award to support Kendra Strauss's research ... Research assistance was provided, in part, by RobertoDuran-Fernan-dez and Oliver Cover from Oxford's Department of Politics as well ...
ABSTRACT Unfree labor has not disappeared from advanced capitalist economies. In this sense the d... more ABSTRACT Unfree labor has not disappeared from advanced capitalist economies. In this sense the debates among and between Marxist and orthodox economic historians about the incompatibility of capitalism and unfree labor are moot: the International Labour Organisation has identified forced, coerced, and unfree labor as a contemporary issue of global concern. Previously hidden forms of unfree labor have emerged in parallel with several other well-documented trends affecting labor conditions, rights, and modes of regulation. These evolving types of unfree labor include the increasing normalization of contingent work (and, by extension, the undermining of the standard contract of employment), and an increase in labor intermediation. The normative, political, and numerical rise of temporary employment agencies in many countries in the last three decades is indicative of these trends. It is in the context of this rapidly changing landscape that this book consolidates and expands on research designed to understand new institutions for work in the global era. This edited collection provides a theoretical and empirical exploration of the links between unfree labor, intermediation, and modes of regulation, with particular focus on the evolving institutional forms and political-economic contexts that have been implicated in, and shaped by, the ascendency of temp agencies. What is distinctive about this collection is this bi-focal lens: it makes a substantial theoretical contribution by linking disparate literatures on, and debates about, the co-evolution of contingent work and unfree labor, new forms of labor intermediation, and different regulatory approaches; but it further lays the foundation for this theory in a series of empirically rich and geographically diverse case studies. This integrative approach is grounded in a cross-national comparative framework, using this approach as the basis for assessing how, and to what extent, temporary agency work can be considered unfree wage labor.
The gangmaster system has been characterised as a highly exploitative form of labour contracting ... more The gangmaster system has been characterised as a highly exploitative form of labour contracting and a relic of coercive nineteenth century practices associated with the recruitment and control of casual workers. Its continued existence in the UK was brought to popular attention in 2004 when 23 Chinese cocklepickers, employed by a gangmaster, drowned at Morecambe Bay in Lancashire: the Gangmaster Licensing Authority (GLA) was subsequently legislated into existence to regulate the industry. The gangmaster system represents ostensibly contradictory facets of contemporary British labour markets: on the one hand, it has been described as both an historical form of labour associated with a teleological view of capitalist development, and a resurgent 'medieval' set of working practices; on the other, it is heralded as a successful form of regulatory labour market intervention and a model to emulate in other sectors in which precarious and temporary forms of work are the norm. This paper employs the Gramscian notion of hegemony and Karl Polanyi's concept of the double movement to examine the extent to which the regulation of gangmasters can be seen as an ideological and practical shift away from the normative ideal of deregulated labour markets in the UK. Can the GLA model be employed in other sectors that employ casual workers, and has it been shown to improve the quality of temporary, precarious and low-paid work?
... demonstrated that peer/colleague and family interactions can strongly influence savings ... p... more ... demonstrated that peer/colleague and family interactions can strongly influence savings ... paper, used to describe the effects of place) with geography in the study of health inequalities ...occupational, private, and personal pensions.7 The first pillar is less generous than in most ...
Abstract This paper presents an analysis of two original datasets on attitudes to housing wealth ... more Abstract This paper presents an analysis of two original datasets on attitudes to housing wealth as an asset for retirement. Employing statistical techniques, socio-demographic and financial variables are shown to be significant in the context of whether respondents
ABSTRACT Many British workers rely upon their accumulated pension savings for retirement income. ... more ABSTRACT Many British workers rely upon their accumulated pension savings for retirement income. Whether they appreciate the importance of saving for the future, and whether they intend to do so, are not well-understood. Based upon a representative sample of UK residents, we show that the perceived importance of pension planning is positively correlated with respondents' risk tolerance, age and income, and whether their spouses participate in employer-sponsored pension plans. Those less likely to believe planning for the future is important are younger, earn less, are women, and will rely upon others for their expected retirement welfare. It is also apparent that generic sources of information provided remotely or at the national scale for individual and household pension planning, preparedness, and knowledge of annuities do not stand comparison with the perceived value of intimate and specialist relationships. The unit of retirement planning is typically the household, rarely the region, and hardly ever the nation. To better understand these findings we frame their interpretation with reference to recent behavioral research that emphasizes people's limited cognitive and social resources and the use of heuristics such as salience in setting priorities. The implications of this framework and our empirical findings for the design and delivery of private pensions conclude the paper.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2014
ABSTRACT In 2003 the British literary magazine Granta published an issue on climate change, “This... more ABSTRACT In 2003 the British literary magazine Granta published an issue on climate change, “This Overheating World,” containing reportage and essays but almost no fiction—and the claim that our “failure of the imagination” regarding socioenvironmental change is both a political and a literary one. The decade since has seen a relative burgeoning of what has been dubbed “cli-fi,” dominated by apocalyptic and dystopian literary–geographical imaginations. In this article I ask this question: If these are our ways of imagining the future, what are the relationships among cultural imaginaries, theories, and politics of socioenvironmental change? Engaging the work of Frederic Jameson on utopia, and the novels of Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver, I argue that the flourishing interest in narrative, stories, and storytelling in human geography opens up opportunities for exploring political imaginaries of climate change through utopian and dystopian impulses present in its “fictionable worlds.” Available to download for those without access to Annals at: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NAwhwk44VPDWrHkbX2fm/full Link will work for up to 50 views/downloads.
Crises of seniors’ care in countries like the UK and Canada, further highlighted by the COVID-19 ... more Crises of seniors’ care in countries like the UK and Canada, further highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, have been connected to processes of privatization and financialization. In this paper I argue that rent theory is important for disaggregating mechanisms, including of accumulation by dispossession, the devaluation of labour, and assetization, that underpin the process of financialization in the sector. Work on rents often divides between critical approaches, especially to land rent, and mainstream institutionalist and public choice approaches to rent-seeking. Critical rent theory is evolving beyond this divide to understand a broader range of types of rent. Yet, despite attention to the increasing importance of economic rents and forms of rentierism, labour and social reproduction are often excluded from the analysis of how rent relations arise. This paper demonstrates the problems with these exclusions. The argument is illustrated through an analysis of the restructuring of e...
This final report highlights the increasing attention to precarity, including academic precarity,... more This final report highlights the increasing attention to precarity, including academic precarity, within geography. After briefly discussing the implications for approaches to agency, I argue for attention to debates about racialized and racial capitalism from labour geographers. I suggest that theorizations of racial capitalism emerge from particular standpoints, and that geographers are well placed to explore racial capitalisms in a plural sense if we are willing to grapple with the standpoints from which we theorize in labour geography itself. I draw on the ‘infrastructural turn’ to illustrate how labour geographers can start to think with relational approaches to racial capitalism.
... in our application to the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for a DPhil CASE awa... more ... in our application to the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for a DPhil CASE award to support Kendra Strauss's research ... Research assistance was provided, in part, by RobertoDuran-Fernan-dez and Oliver Cover from Oxford's Department of Politics as well ...
ABSTRACT Unfree labor has not disappeared from advanced capitalist economies. In this sense the d... more ABSTRACT Unfree labor has not disappeared from advanced capitalist economies. In this sense the debates among and between Marxist and orthodox economic historians about the incompatibility of capitalism and unfree labor are moot: the International Labour Organisation has identified forced, coerced, and unfree labor as a contemporary issue of global concern. Previously hidden forms of unfree labor have emerged in parallel with several other well-documented trends affecting labor conditions, rights, and modes of regulation. These evolving types of unfree labor include the increasing normalization of contingent work (and, by extension, the undermining of the standard contract of employment), and an increase in labor intermediation. The normative, political, and numerical rise of temporary employment agencies in many countries in the last three decades is indicative of these trends. It is in the context of this rapidly changing landscape that this book consolidates and expands on research designed to understand new institutions for work in the global era. This edited collection provides a theoretical and empirical exploration of the links between unfree labor, intermediation, and modes of regulation, with particular focus on the evolving institutional forms and political-economic contexts that have been implicated in, and shaped by, the ascendency of temp agencies. What is distinctive about this collection is this bi-focal lens: it makes a substantial theoretical contribution by linking disparate literatures on, and debates about, the co-evolution of contingent work and unfree labor, new forms of labor intermediation, and different regulatory approaches; but it further lays the foundation for this theory in a series of empirically rich and geographically diverse case studies. This integrative approach is grounded in a cross-national comparative framework, using this approach as the basis for assessing how, and to what extent, temporary agency work can be considered unfree wage labor.
The gangmaster system has been characterised as a highly exploitative form of labour contracting ... more The gangmaster system has been characterised as a highly exploitative form of labour contracting and a relic of coercive nineteenth century practices associated with the recruitment and control of casual workers. Its continued existence in the UK was brought to popular attention in 2004 when 23 Chinese cocklepickers, employed by a gangmaster, drowned at Morecambe Bay in Lancashire: the Gangmaster Licensing Authority (GLA) was subsequently legislated into existence to regulate the industry. The gangmaster system represents ostensibly contradictory facets of contemporary British labour markets: on the one hand, it has been described as both an historical form of labour associated with a teleological view of capitalist development, and a resurgent 'medieval' set of working practices; on the other, it is heralded as a successful form of regulatory labour market intervention and a model to emulate in other sectors in which precarious and temporary forms of work are the norm. This paper employs the Gramscian notion of hegemony and Karl Polanyi's concept of the double movement to examine the extent to which the regulation of gangmasters can be seen as an ideological and practical shift away from the normative ideal of deregulated labour markets in the UK. Can the GLA model be employed in other sectors that employ casual workers, and has it been shown to improve the quality of temporary, precarious and low-paid work?
... demonstrated that peer/colleague and family interactions can strongly influence savings ... p... more ... demonstrated that peer/colleague and family interactions can strongly influence savings ... paper, used to describe the effects of place) with geography in the study of health inequalities ...occupational, private, and personal pensions.7 The first pillar is less generous than in most ...
Abstract This paper presents an analysis of two original datasets on attitudes to housing wealth ... more Abstract This paper presents an analysis of two original datasets on attitudes to housing wealth as an asset for retirement. Employing statistical techniques, socio-demographic and financial variables are shown to be significant in the context of whether respondents
ABSTRACT Many British workers rely upon their accumulated pension savings for retirement income. ... more ABSTRACT Many British workers rely upon their accumulated pension savings for retirement income. Whether they appreciate the importance of saving for the future, and whether they intend to do so, are not well-understood. Based upon a representative sample of UK residents, we show that the perceived importance of pension planning is positively correlated with respondents' risk tolerance, age and income, and whether their spouses participate in employer-sponsored pension plans. Those less likely to believe planning for the future is important are younger, earn less, are women, and will rely upon others for their expected retirement welfare. It is also apparent that generic sources of information provided remotely or at the national scale for individual and household pension planning, preparedness, and knowledge of annuities do not stand comparison with the perceived value of intimate and specialist relationships. The unit of retirement planning is typically the household, rarely the region, and hardly ever the nation. To better understand these findings we frame their interpretation with reference to recent behavioral research that emphasizes people's limited cognitive and social resources and the use of heuristics such as salience in setting priorities. The implications of this framework and our empirical findings for the design and delivery of private pensions conclude the paper.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2014
ABSTRACT In 2003 the British literary magazine Granta published an issue on climate change, “This... more ABSTRACT In 2003 the British literary magazine Granta published an issue on climate change, “This Overheating World,” containing reportage and essays but almost no fiction—and the claim that our “failure of the imagination” regarding socioenvironmental change is both a political and a literary one. The decade since has seen a relative burgeoning of what has been dubbed “cli-fi,” dominated by apocalyptic and dystopian literary–geographical imaginations. In this article I ask this question: If these are our ways of imagining the future, what are the relationships among cultural imaginaries, theories, and politics of socioenvironmental change? Engaging the work of Frederic Jameson on utopia, and the novels of Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver, I argue that the flourishing interest in narrative, stories, and storytelling in human geography opens up opportunities for exploring political imaginaries of climate change through utopian and dystopian impulses present in its “fictionable worlds.” Available to download for those without access to Annals at: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NAwhwk44VPDWrHkbX2fm/full Link will work for up to 50 views/downloads.
This working paper was presented at the Conference on Global Labor Migration: Past and Present, J... more This working paper was presented at the Conference on Global Labor Migration: Past and Present, June 20-22, 2019, The International Institute for Social History Amsterdam, The Netherlands. (DRAFT. Please Do Not Cite Without Permission. Comments Welcome)
Working in the Context of Austerity: Challenges and Struggles, 2020
As we argue in this chapter, context-specific and relational understandings of austerity and the ... more As we argue in this chapter, context-specific and relational understandings of austerity and the complex policy mobilities (McCann and Ward, 2012) of New Public Management require critical attention to how processes play out in particular national and sub-national contexts (Pike et al., 2018). There are common trends, but unevenness also exists at the national and sub-national levels (Baines and Cunningham (2015). The policy diffusion of NPM also goes beyond European and Anglo-American welfare states, and – as in countries like Canada and Australia that did not suffer financial crises – has been a driver of reform even where the post-2008 austerity discourse is largely absent. This chapter contributes to the literatures on austerity and NPM by comparing two such contexts, focusing on sub-national scales to examine the social care sector in Vancouver, British Columbia (in Canada) and Shanghai (in China). It does so by using the concept of social infrastructure to connect state-led marketization and outsourcing in the elderecare sector with, on one hand, the influence of NPM and, on the other, the financialization that has ensued in recent years.
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Papers by Kendra Strauss
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. (DRAFT. Please Do Not Cite Without Permission. Comments Welcome)