Rina Agarwala

Bio: Rina Agarwala is an academic researcher from Johns Hopkins University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Globalization & Collective action. The author has an hindex of 13, co-authored 29 publications receiving 907 citations. Previous affiliations of Rina Agarwala include University of Copenhagen & Cornell University.

Reshaping the social contract: emerging relations between the state and informal labor in India

Abstract: As states grapple with the forces of liberalization and globalization, they are increasingly pulling back on earlier levels of welfare provision and rhetoric. This article examines how the eclipsing role of the state in labor protection has affected state-labor relations. In particular, it analyzes collective action strategies among India's growing mass of informally employed workers, who do not receive secure wages or benefits from either the state or their employer. In response to the recent changes in state policies, I find that informal workers have had to alter their organizing strategies in ways that are reshaping the social contract between state and labor. Rather than demanding employers for workers' benefits, they are making direct demands on the state for welfare benefits. To attain state attention, informal workers are using the rhetoric of citizenship rights to offer their unregulated labor and political support in return for state recognition of their work. Such recognition bestows informal workers with a degree of social legitimacy, thereby dignifying their discontent and bolstering their status as claim makers in their society. These findings offer a reformulated model of state-labor relations that focuses attention on the qualitative, rather than quantitative, nature of the nexus; encompasses a dynamic and inter-dependent conceptualization of state and labor; and accommodates the creative and diverse strategies of industrial relations being forged in the contemporary era. Since the late 1990s, a literature designed to examine the variable effects of "globalization" has grown exponentially in the social sciences. 1 Within this literature, several scholars have bolstered the significance of globalization by arguing that the economic policies and the social forces that integrate national economies are

INTRODUCTION: Restoring Agency to Class: Puzzles from the Subcontinent

Abstract: Class explains much in the differentiation of life chances and political dynamics in South Asia. Yet in the subcontinent class has lost its centrality as a way of understanding the world and how it changes. Indian intellectuals have been a major force in the eclipsing of class through discursive strategies of constructivist idealism. Formalism in social sciences finds class relations elusive and difficult to measure. Market triumphalism eclipsed concern with rehabilitation of “weaker sectors” and redressing of exploitation as measures of national success. Class analytics, however, continues to serve two critical functions: disaggregating development and explaining challenges to rules of the game. Restoring agency to class requires attention first to relations that structure choice in restricted or expansive ways. Global forces have altered people's relations to production and to one another, as have changes in the political opportunity structure, with significant effects on tactics and outcomes. ...

Tapping the Indian Diaspora for Indian Development

Abstract: This study examines how Indian immigrants in the US have impacted Indian development. The vast majority of Indian immigrants in the US are said to provide individual funds to various causes and family members in India. These linkages are, however, extremely diffuse and informal and, therefore, variable and difficult to study empirically. To explore the more formal, sustained transnational linkages occurring between the Indian dispora and the US, this study uses US-based organizations that are founded and led by Indians as the primary lens. This study complements similar studies being conducted by Min Zhou (University of California-Los Angeles) on Chinese immigrants, Jennifer Huynh (Princeton University) on Vietnamese immigrants, and Alejandro Portes (Princeton University) on immigrants from Colombia, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. In all these countries, the impact of diaspora populations on national development has long existed and has been consistently understudied.

Redefining Exploitation: Self-employed workers’ movements in garments and trash collection

Abstract: This article examines how self-employed workers are organizing in the garments and waste collection industries in India. Although the question of who is profiting from self-employed workers’ labor is complex, the cases outlined in this paper highlight telling instances of how some self-employed workers are organizing as workers. They are fighting labor exploitation by redefining the concept to include additional exploitation axes (from the state and middle class) and forms (including sexual). In doing so, they are redefining potential solutions, including identities and material benefits, to fit their unique needs. By expanding the category of “workers” beyond those defined by a narrow focus on a standard employer-employee relationship, these movements are also fighting exclusion from earlier labor protections by increasing the number of entitled beneficiaries. These struggles provide an important corrective to contemporary analyses of labor politics that focus too heavily on the precarious nature of employer-employee relationships and too little on broader definitions of work, exploitation, and protection. These broader definitions better represent the world's mass of vulnerable workers and are being articulated from below.

The Employment Relationship and Movement Strategies among Domestic Workers in India

Abstract: This article examines how paid domestic workers in India fight to reproduce themselves by attaining recognition for their employment relationship and struggling to advance their labor rights. We fi...

Economic growth and income inequality

Abstract: We investigate whether income inequality affects subsequent growth in a cross-country sample for 1965-90, using the models of Barro (1997), Bleaney and Nishiyama (2002) and Sachs and Warner (1997), with negative results. We then investigate the evolution of income inequality over the same period and its correlation with growth. The dominating feature is inequality convergence across countries. This convergence has been significantly faster amongst developed countries. Growth does not appear to influence the evolution of inequality over time. Outline

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Abstract: What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

Infertility around the globe: new thinking on gender, reproductive technologies and global movements in the 21st century

Abstract: Background Infertility is estimated to affect as many as 186 million people worldwide. Although male infertility contributes to more than half of all cases of global childlessness, infertility remains a woman's social burden. Unfortunately, areas of the world with the highest rates of infertility are often those with poor access to assisted reproductive techniques (ARTs). In such settings, women may be abandoned to their childless destinies. However, emerging data suggest that making ART accessible and affordable is an important gender intervention. To that end, this article presents an overview of what we know about global infertility, ART and changing gender relations, posing five key questions: (i) why is infertility an ongoing global reproductive health problem? (ii) What are the gender effects of infertility, and are they changing over time? (iii) What do we know about the globalization of ART to resource-poor settings? (iv) How are new global initiatives attempting to improve access to IVF? (v) Finally, what can be done to overcome infertility, help the infertile and enhance low-cost IVF (LCIVF) activism? Methods An exhaustive literature review using MEDLINE, Google Scholar and the keyword search function provided through the Yale University Library (i.e. which scans multiple databases simultaneously) identified 103 peer-reviewed journal articles and 37 monographs, chapters and reports from the years 2000-2014 in the areas of: (i) infertility demography, (ii) ART in low-resource settings, (iii) gender and infertility in low-resource settings and (iv) the rise of LCIVF initiatives. International Federation of Fertility Societies Surveillance reports were particularly helpful in identifying important global trends in IVF clinic distribution between 2002 and 2010. Additionally, a series of articles published by scholars who are tracking global cross-border reproductive care (CBRC) trends, as well as others who are involved in the growing LCIVF movement, were invaluable. Results Recent global demographic surveys indicate that infertility remains an ongoing reproductive problem, with six key demographic features. Despite the massive global expansion of ART services over the past decade (2005-2015), ART remains inaccessible in many parts of the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where IVF clinics are still absent in most countries. For women living in such ART-poor settings, the gender effects of infertility may be devastating. In contrast, in ART-rich regions such as the Middle East, the negative gender effects of infertility are diminishing over time, especially with state subsidization of ART. Furthermore, men are increasingly acknowledging their male infertility and seeking ICSI. Thus, access to ART may ameliorate gender discrimination, especially in the Global South. To that end, a number of clinician-led, LCIVF initiatives are in development to provide affordable ART, particularly in Africa. Without access to LCIVF, many infertile couples must incur catastrophic expenditures to fund their IVF, or engage in CBRC to seek lower-cost IVF elsewhere. Conclusions Given the present realities, three future directions for research and intervention are suggested: (i) address the preventable causes of infertility, (ii) provide support and alternatives for the infertile and (iii) encourage new LCIVF initiatives to improve availability, affordability and acceptability of ART around the globe.