There are numerous examples of how urban sprawl has created nightmarish conditions in Latin American cities. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, for instance, many workers spend four hours on a bus to get to and from work because the sprawl is so extensive (over 500 hilly square miles) and the subway lines are no longer sufficient (Robinson 1989, A18). The four million cars that circulate through the city on a daily basis have caused such severe pollution that officials have placed pollution monitors around the city to inform residents about air conditions (Robinson 1989, A18). Likewise, Mexico City sprawls over 950 square miles (about three times the area of New York City) and its residents’ three million automobiles emit a total of 12,000 tons of pollutants into the atmosphere every day (Kandell 1988, in Joseph and Szuchman 1996, 187).

    Many people living in Latin American cities find themselves crowded into densely packed shanty towns because of the lack of affordable housing. In Lima, Peru, two-thirds of the working-age population live in shanty towns (Robinson 1989, A18). In Mexico City, an average square kilometer contains 5,494 people, making it the city with the highest demographic density in the world (Kandell 1988, in Joseph and Szuchman 1996, 181). The highest density rates are found in barrios that weave among the city’s more established neighborhoods and continue to grow despite the lack of services such as clean running water and trash pickup.

    Nonetheless, city life offers poor people more hope for a better life than just about any other place. In the city, they have greater access to resources to transform their situations, however marginally. With innovation, family support, and luck, the poor can eke out a living on the fringes of the urban landscape and its economy.

    It is clear from the observations of El Alto residents and the more general descriptions of daily life in cities that the Latin American urban landscape is characterized by informality. Informality can be seen concretely in informal settlements (shanty towns) that, despite the lack of roads, schools, houses, and clean water, absorb the overflow of in-migrants arriving daily in the cities. Informality also illustrates that, because of the recent contraction of the public sector coupled with the still-struggling industrial sector, the formal economy is incapable of generating enough jobs to accommodate the wave of urban newcomers (Lopez 1993, 25). As a result, the poor are left to fend for themselves with meager resources, creating work in the informal sector by trading in small urban goods (watches, cigarette lighters, used magazines), selling handicrafts, cooking meals, fixing bicycles, taking part in street entertainment (jugglers, fire-eaters), and even assembling clothing or electronic parts at home for large corporations (Lopez 1993, 25). The informal sector provides opportunities as well as extreme hardships and inequalities.

    We focus on informal housing and employment because they are integral to global economic change. On the one hand, informality has become the primary human response -- derived from inventiveness and family networking -- to the effects of global economic restructuring within cities in lesser developed countries (LDCs), allowing for a certain degree of crisis management on the individual/family level. On the other hand, because it has helped compensate for the inequalities and the suffering imposed by Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), the informal sector has actually subsidized processes of globalization. (Discussed in more detail in Unit 2, SAPs are policy packages designed to impose structural changes on LDC economies in order to improve the state of the economy, repay foreign debts, and prevent future economic crises.) In other words, the informal economy has created a "space" in the literal and figurative sense that encompasses a large, impoverished labor reserve that keeps wages low. As you learned in Unit 1, low wages have been a key "selling point" for LDC national governments to attract foreign investment. They also enable participation in the NIDL (New International Division of Labor), which refers to the physical geographic splitting of production and consumption that has been made possible with recent advances in telecommunications (e.g., faxes and e-mail) and transportation (e.g., container shipping). Whereas in the past the production of a particular good took place in more or less one location, it is now possible for the various components of a product to be produced in many locations, assembled in another, and then transported to the consumer market of choice -- a true "global factory."

    In the following section, we consider how poverty on a national scale, resulting from debt and restructuring, has radically affected individual poverty levels. By contextualizing daily experiences within the framework of urban structural change, we see how people have responded locally to the debt crisis and to SAPs, while carving out a niche for themselves in the new global economy. Specifically, we look at how poverty forces informal settlements into the least desirable environmental locations and how these settlements affect the environment. We then look at the informal economy, how it differs from the "formal" sector, and its role in urban life. Finally, we examine how gender, in terms of urban women’s employment, has played a crucial role in sustaining emerging economic and social relations in a more integrated world.
 

 

The Real Issue? -- Poverty

    During the summer of 1992, Rio de Janeiro hosted a summit on the state of the world’s environment that was attended by world leaders, environmentalists, scholars, citizens, and journalists. There was great hope that by working together, the global community could respond to pressing problems like global warming. However, to many LDC officials and representatives, the Summit felt like an opportunity for citizens of MDCs to place the blame for such issues on attempts by LDCs to industrialize and modernize. At issue was the lack of strict environmental standards in industrial areas in LDCs and the amount of fossil fuel pollutants emitted into the atmosphere from factories. LDC representatives responded defensively; they argued that they are a group of nations struggling to play ‘catch-up’ in the race to industrialize and modernize; they are following models set forth by development agencies and MDCs; they have the right to enjoy the benefits that come with being a modern, prosperous nation; and while agreeing to work diligently to prevent unnecessary pollution, they will nonetheless continue to industrialize and develop in the manner that they have followed for decades. The message from the LDCs was clear: national poverty is at the root of environmental deterioration in LDCs and MDCs have not been very good role models.

    The following quote from Indira Gandhi, India’s late prime minister quoted years before the Summit, reminds us of the debate between LDCs and MDCs:

    At issue here is how national scale concerns over economic development have (1) constricted the choices that individuals can make and (2) exacerbated impoverished living conditions by failing to redistribute what little economic growth has been generated. Many government officials see the serious national and international issues that their countries face as the most important and politically expedient ones to address. Issues like the debt crisis and entering the global network of trade take precedence over more local concerns; these priorities are encouraged by the neoliberal attitude that local problems can wait, and indeed will benefit, if economic development is allowed to "trickle down." To clarify this argument, let’s examine the relationships between individual and national need and how they work to produce a deteriorating Latin American urban landscape.

 

A Place for the Poor -- Informal Shelter

 
    Informal settlements are perhaps the most visible sign of widespread poverty. Variously called favelas (in Brazil), pueblos jovenes (young towns), barrios, asentamiento irregulares (irregular settlements), villas miserias (miserable villages -- Argentina), squatter settlements, or shanty towns, these areas are usually characterized by the following: (1) dwellings are built by the current or original occupant, (2) inhabitants have no legal title to the land, and (3) settlements lack, to varying degrees, urban services such as water, power, sanitation, or roads. By the year 2000, the UN estimates that approximately 1 billion people (roughly one-sixth of the world’s population) will live in substandard housing. In Latin America, 1980 estimates of the populations living in informal settlements were alarming. For example, 59% of the total population of Bogota and 40% of Mexico City’s population were estimated to live in informal settlements (UN 1986).

    As Indira Gandhi’s words suggest, it is nearly impossible to discuss environmental problems without considering the role of poverty. Thus, in urban settings it is impossible to separate environmental deterioration from its links with informal settlements. Poor people are often forced to relocate to environmentally fragile places such as steep and unstable hillsides, floodplains, or other areas prone to natural hazards (Page 1988, 104). Once settled in such locations, the large number of people intensifies already tenuous environmental conditions. For example, ten miles east of downtown Mexico City, an informal settlement named Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl ("Neza" for short) has grown to over three million residents, making it the fourth most populous "city" in Mexico. Established in the early 1950s, over the years Neza’s inhabitants have come to the settlement to escape the crowded slums in downtown Mexico City or the impoverished rural areas.

Source: Data extracted from World Resources Institute. 1990. World resources 1990-91. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Table 16.4, p. 260. ©1990 reprinted with the permission of Oxford University Press. World Resources Institute. 

    Although it is individuals who experience poverty, the presence and location of informal settlements are not simply the result of individual choices and/or localized conditions; they are also connected to economic change at a national and international level. Why do these problems persist and how do the poor cope with daily conditions like those described above? The answers require that we examine the larger structural framework within which LDC cities exist in the late twentieth century. As we noted earlier, attempts by LDC national governments in recent decades to become more economically developed have been perhaps the biggest factor in aggravating urban inequalities. We turn now to the effects of the debt crisis and economic restructuring on city life.

Informal Work and Poverty

 

"In 1980, 118 million Latin Americans -- about a third of the region’s total population -- were poor. By 1990, that number had increased to 196 million, or nearly half the total population. Eighty percent of these 78 million ‘new poor’ live in cities" (Vilas 1996, 16). The phenomenal growth of urban poverty has been linked to the failure of LDC economies to attain the economic growth rates needed to increase standards of living. As the full recessionary impacts of the debt crisis hit urban centers, governments were unable to provide a number of critical services that help cities run smoothly, such as new sources of employment, credit or other benefits to small-scale producers, social services to rapidly expanding populations, and shelter and basic urban infrastructure. The small revenues that were generated were directed to debt servicing and streamlining the economy under the advice of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. In response to the hardships incurred by the debt crisis, the demands of international creditors, and the global economy, two interrelated outcomes emerged: (1) the rise of the informal sector and (2) an intensification of export-oriented industrialization.

The widespread loss of manufacturing jobs and the large numbers of rural in-migrants to cities during the 1980's increased the number of people competing for a very limited number of jobs in the "formal" sectors of the economies. Employment options for middle- and lower-class people became more and more limited as industrial restructuring reduced the number of unionized, relatively well-paying jobs. In Mexico City and Medellin, Columbia, for example, manufacturing employment declined by 25% between 1980 and 1988 (Gilbert 1994, 63). At the same time, the growth in the business and corporate sectors led to an increase of very high paid jobs for the top few employees. The burgeoning business sector required an increase in the number of low-paid jobs to support its operation. This support network includes office cleaners, food service workers, street and shop vendors, and child-care workers, among others. As a result, LDC economies became polarized with a small minority benefiting from restructuring and a majority searching for their niche in these new economies, even when that niche involved arduous work for poor wages.

What emerged was an informal sector called the "fourth dimension," or an "invisible" exchange network based on self-employment that is the urban equivalent of rural self-subsistence (Lopez 1993, 24). Lopez calls the informal economy the "fourth dimension" because it does not adhere to the officially recognized sectoral distinctions of economic theory, and indeed, actually falls outside state regulation and state protection. Laws protecting minimum wage or working conditions, for example, have little or no effect on informal employment conditions. By helping absorb the deficiencies of the rural primary sector (agriculture) and by offering a productive role and a living space for those displaced from the secondary (manufacturing) and tertiary (formal service) sectors in the city, the informal urban economy has helped extend the self-sufficiency of the countryside of years past to self-employment in the city. The informal economy has thus become an amalgamation of different innovative and productive activities that are difficult to categorize within traditional economic theory. Perhaps an easy way to understand how the informal sector can be characterized is to compare it with the formal sector (see Table 6).

    Because it is so difficult to classify, the informal economy has been viewed by some planners, politicians, and scholars as having no function other than providing for the daily survival of the poor. The informal activities of the poor are often perceived as peripheral to "normal" urban behavior and activities, and are thus known as the "invisible" sector within cities. By referring to these activities as the "fourth dimension," Lopez draws our attention to the fact that the informal economy should not and cannot be separated from the distinct primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors of the formal economy. Her terminology gives us a way to think about a vital part of the economy that might otherwise be overlooked.

    In rapidly changing and globally integrated economies, the informal economy has been a crucial aspect of economic restructuring and has played a critical compensatory role in the debt crisis. The informal economy has kept wages low and has subsidized numerous formal sector activities by serving as a "safety valve" that absorbed unemployment in the formal sectors during the debt crisis. Employment in the informal economy in nine Latin American countries increased by 6.8% annually between 1980 and 1985 (Gilbert 1994, 70). Recent PREALC (the International Labor Organization’s Regional Employment Program in Latin America) figures show that the contribution of the informal sector to urban employment in Latin America rose from 25.6% in 1980 to 30.8% in 1990, rising especially quickly in the economies most affected by recession (emphasis ours). Thus, rather than hindering urban economic expansion, the urban poor use their own energies to meet their needs (at least partially) at little cost to urban authorities. "In short, the poor house, feed, and clothe themselves with little government help and yet provide a ready, on-the-spot labor supply for expanding formal sector activities" (Drakakis-Smith 1987, 67).

    The latter half of Drakakis-Smith’s quote makes an especially important point. Aside from merely absorbing excess labor, the informal economy has proven to be an integral part of the waged and regulated formal sector. An example of this relationship is a widely cited case study on the ways that "trash pickers" in the city of Cali, Columbia have assisted indirectly in the industrial production of paper products ( Birkbeck 1979). One of the main industries in Cali is the production of paper and rubber. Cartón de Columbia, the city’s primary producer of paper products normally imports wood pulp from Canada and Chile as an industrial input. As the prices of wood pulp climbed during the 1970s, it became far cheaper to rely in part on recycled waste paper. This created a new opening in the market and, with well over 2,000 trash pickers in the city, it created a market for those operating informally. Without contracts and without a set pay scale, pickers find, sort, bundle, and sell paper to be used as raw material input by Cartón de Columbia.

    The presence of such a network of pickers gives Cartón de Columbia the opportunity to work through an informal-formal hierarchy. Rather than selling waste paper directly to the company, the pickers sell their bundles of paper to satellite warehouses, which offer no contracts and no set pay scale, thus creating an informal relationship between the warehouses and pickers. The satellite warehouses then sell to middle men, who set the price of paper according to the prices established in their contracts with Cartón de Columbia. The presence of such a contract signifies a more formal relationship between the company and the middle men.

    This kind of "flexible production" benefits Cartón de Columbia significantly because garbage pickers are not on the payroll and their labor and the paper collected by them is inexpensive. If the market fluctuates, the company can simply demand less paper without being locked contractually into importing a certain amount from other countries. If the garbage pickers unionize suddenly or demand higher prices and contracts, the paper company can simply quit buying from them. Recycled paper is only bought as long as it is cheaper than importing higher quality and more desirable wood pulp. Thus, external prices of wood pulp set the upper limit on how much pickers are able to earn. The opportunities provided to the poor rely strictly on the presence of the informal economy. Trash picking is not only an expression of poverty, it also has a large role in maintaining poverty via the perpetuation of the informal economy (Birkbeck 1979, 161).

    Vending is another example of how the formal economy benefits from the presence of the informal economy. On street corners throughout Latin America, the presence of people (especially small children) selling chewing gum, cigarettes, candy, plastic toys, or magazines and newspapers is common. Small, independently-owned shops selling similar goods have also cropped up throughout the cities. This low cost distribution system benefits companies producing these goods. "What better way for a company producing cigarettes or chewing gum than to have a labor force on virtually every road junction and pavement in the city?" (Gilbert 1994, 69).

    Focusing solely on the benefits of the informal sector for the urban poor overlooks its exploitative aspects. In fact, as the examples of Cartón de Columbia and street vending indirectly show, the informal sector is not self-contained but is linked to the rest of the urban economy in an exploitative way. Drakakis-Smith (1987, 72) points out that rather than rely on the term "informal sector" exclusively, "most researchers now refer to ‘petty-commodity’ or ‘petty capitalist’ production which more accurately reflects the subordinate or controlled nature of the activity." He also examines some of these unequal relationships (Drakakis-Smith 1987, 73). For instance, most entrepreneurs of enterprises are waged and own equipment or the necessary capital for the operation of the business (i.e., owning pedicabs that are rented daily to informal workers or advancing cash to food vendors to buy products at wholesale markets). This kind of relationship leaves the informal worker dependent on the entrepreneur and lessens their likelihood of being able to strike out on their own in the same business. Informal activities also keep the cost of living down for the already wealthy. At the same time, the money that small-scale producers are able to make is often spent on goods like food, cigarettes, or inputs for their own businesses (e.g., kerosene, metal utensils, and tools). These expenditures become profit for the manufacturer and "constitute an income transfer from poor to rich that far outweighs the smaller returns that flow in other directions" (Drakakis-Smith 1987, 73). In short, viewing the informal sector in terms of the inequalities it produces and reinforces helps us to understand why urban poverty, and the informal sector within which it exists, has not been formally addressed or remedied. The informal sector serves a distinct function in keeping government costs at a minimum during periods of economic instability, and it subsidizes the activities of those with more political clout (i.e., the business and/or wealthier classes).

    The functions of the informal sector have become even more important in the contemporary period of global economic restructuring. In the next section, we will look at how the informal sector provides the flexibility demanded in today’s marketplace and the ways in which it literally supports the New International Division of Labor (NIDL) by sustaining cheap wages with which to attract foreign investment.
 

The Drive for Flexibility and Profits: Globalization and Informal Workers

 
    In recent years, as part of the intensification of export-oriented industrialization and the drive toward free trade and global economic integration, companies in Latin America, both domestic and foreign, have sought ways to increase output and profits while cutting production costs and labor costs. One of the easiest ways to cut costs has been to eliminate formal jobs and to rely increasingly on subcontracting. Under subcontracting, production facilities employ workers outside of the formal employment process to produce one small aspect of a product, such as sewing garments or assembling electronic parts. Workers get paid for each individual product they assemble rather than receiving an hourly or yearly salary. Subcontracting offers a number of benefits for the production facility because it ensures a supply of various types of labor that would otherwise be unacceptable within the unionized parent firm. The fluctuating, labor-intensive phases of production can be performed by cheap, unorganized, unskilled, off-premises workers at considerable savings to the parent company (Lawson 1992, 7).

    We can begin to see the complex ways that the presence of an informal sector facilitates corporate strategies like subcontracting, and how conditions of poverty in LDC cities subsidize the NIDL. For example, urban informality lowers the cost of labor production. Because it costs relatively little to live in informal settlements, employers feel less compelled to offer a decent living wage (Gilbert 1994, 70). Moreover, the number of people desperate for work in the cities keeps wages low inside and outside factory gates; employees know that if they demand higher wages, they can easily be replaced by someone who will readily work for whatever wage employers offer.

    As we noted in Unit 1, foreign investors who want to establish manufacturing plants are attracted to LDCs by the low wages and the ready supply of laborers. The informal sector plays a large role in securing both of these attractions and provides the flexibility required in a competitive global market. Such flexibility is important because products originating from LDCs are susceptible to the fluctuating and unpredictable markets of the MDCs. For example, the garment industry is very prominent in LDCs, producing low-cost apparel for Western markets. However, with the fickle nature of the fashion industry, it is often necessary for these factories to be able to shift or slow down production drastically. Flexibility allows manufacturers to produce only what is needed and reduce the risk of lost profits.

    Flexibility has subsequently become the "catch-phrase" of the NIDL and economic globalization; it helps maintain efficiency and profitably in an increasingly competitive world by displacing the risks of production onto low-income workers. As a result, workers cannot always count on regular work and what work they do find increasingly entails subcontracting and/or homeworking at substandard wages and in unregulated working conditions. People involved in work contracted by a garment industry have to purchase equipment (e.g., sewing machines). If the company suddenly stops producing a certain item that required the labor of that worker, the worker incurs the cost of both the machine and the lost wages, while the parent company is out relatively little.

    Subcontracting and homeworking have become vital aspects of neoliberal restructuring strategies; they offer the flexibility and profitability that are crucial to stay "afloat" in the globalized world. Yet we must ask, which people are in the position most able to accommodate flexibility? Our discussion of the informal sector would be incomplete if it did not consider what has been called the "feminization of industrial restructuring" (Lawson 1995). Because of dominant cultural beliefs about gender roles that are prevalent in most LDCs (i.e., women are responsible for maintaining the household and raising children) and the fact that women’s labor outside the household is less valued than men’s so that women can be paid less, industries find women to be perfectly suited to subcontracting and homeworking. In the next section we will look briefly at the ways that patriarchy shapes women’s wage-earning experiences.

 

Targeting Women: The Newest Labor Force

 
    In nearly every society throughout history the concept of work has been gendered and viewed in dualist terms. Men are seen as those who work outside the home, in the formal and productive labor force, while women are viewed as the primary caretakers of the household and children. Women’s work inside the home, including food preparation, cleaning, health care, and child rearing reduces family expenses and dependence on outside services and resources. In addition, household work helps to keep men’s wages low; employers can justify paying men less because he doesn’t have to spend extra money on outside services to stay properly dressed, fed, and healthy. His wife, mother, or other female relatives keep him "maintained" for free. Thus the feminized domestic sphere becomes a way to subsidize labor production.

    In urban areas in LDCs today, the domestic sphere has taken on added importance, as has the broadening of "women’s work," within the framework of recent economic instability and SAPs. On the one hand, as social welfare programs like education, health care, or affordable shelter have been eroded by widespread government disinvestment, households have had to assume more and more responsibility for these activities. Since most of these activities fall within the domestic reproductive sphere, they often fall on women’s shoulders. Because poor urban households are increasingly located in decaying environmental conditions, women have the added responsibility of securing clean water and keeping their homes clean and healthy for their family members. On the other hand, with the reduction of formal employment in general, women have been forced to find some sort of waged labor to supplement a husband’s or father’s decreasing wages or to support a family as the sole breadwinner. As Cunningham and Reed (1995, 25) argue, "structural adjustment places debt reduction in front of basic social needs, especially women’s needs . . . these austere economic packages increase women’s hardships relative to men’s."

    The need to earn wages for daily survival has pushed women into the formal and informal labor force with no reduction in the burden of their growing household responsibilities. The necessary blending of the domestic sphere with waged work has led to what scholars have called the double day. Women not only face a full day of waged work, they also have to handle the needs of their family members -- unpaid work that often takes up several more hours of their day. "In their dual roles of producer and reproducer, they (the women) become daily ‘crisis managers,’ stretching both the clock and their physical resources to superhuman limits to ‘work more than ever with less than ever’" (Lopez 1993, 26). The double day phenomenon becomes even more significant when we consider that at least one-third of the poorest households in Latin America are headed by women. With no other adult present and able to assist with the household tasks, the burden of providing for the children or elderly parents is carried by the woman alone.

    While many women are entering the formalized work force in large numbers (for example, the maquiladora industry on the border between Mexico and the US), many others enter the informal sector because less skill or training is required. Women’s labor is often more desirable because they can be paid less; their lack of education, training, and the demands their family and household place on their time give employers several reasons to pay them less. Yet even when women are equally qualified, on a worldwide average they are paid nearly 40% less than men for the very same work (Cunningham and Reed 1995, 24). Because of prevailing patriarchal attitudes, women’s work, no matter how skilled or productive, is highly undervalued.

    Gender roles play an important part in sustaining the economic changes examined so far in this module. As low wages become the axis that sustains global manufacturing processes, women are increasingly targeted to do manufacturing work. "[T]he integration of developing countries into the global market has had a profound impact on women’s labor force participation. On average, the female labor force has been growing twice as fast as male labor. There has been a particularly rapid increase in women working in the export-oriented manufacturing sector, where the rate of growth of global industrial output has been the fastest" (Cunningham and Reed 1995, 24).

    The widespread presence of women in informal work and the increasing need to augment household incomes makes women particularly susceptible to new trends in labor reorganization -- subcontracted homework. This type of work offers women the flexibility of working at home while watching children or maintaining the household. Subcontracted homework is often a part of industries such as garment sewing or electronic assembly where work is taken home and done "piecemeal." The worker is paid for every piece of clothing she/he can sew or each electronic component she/he can assemble. For women, this kind of work is convenient because they can earn money after the household responsibilities are taken care of (often at night) or with the help of extra family labor (e.g., children who can help with the sewing).

    The research of Victoria Lawson (1995), who has done extensive interviews with Ecuadorian women in these work situations, provides an example of the convenience homework offers for women. She calls our attention to a 53 year-old woman named Fanny, an industrial homeworker who sews trousers for a factory. She is paid piece rates, receives no benefits or social security, and relies entirely on this one source of work. Fanny has been doing this kind of work for years. At first, it enabled her to stay home with her own children; now it helps her watch her grandchildren while her daughter works. She says of homeworking:

    There is, however, a downside to this flexibility and convenience. As noted earlier, because domestic work is viewed as women’s responsibility, women often arrange their day to watch their children and accomplish household chores before beginning their paid work. Fanny describes her own double day:

    The discussion of gender ideologies shows just one of the ways that debt, structural adjustment, and the trend toward free trade, flexibility, and greater global competitiveness have created social adjustments that affect families and households in concrete ways. While the discussion on the hardships of women within industrial work and within their own households is not meant to downplay those experienced by men, gender relations and women’s experiences are highlighted because recently they have played a huge role in the success of the NIDL; as such, they are a vital part of the human dimensions of global change.

 

Conclusion

 
    By looking at what city life has to offer recent in-migrants and poorer urban residents, we have revisited a common theme in this module -- the difficulty in drawing distinctions between the operations of geographic scales and the need to recognize the interconnections between them. This has been highlighted by our discussion of the linkages between national and individual poverty and the ways that both influence and are influenced by global processes. Structuring forces (e.g., the increasing integration of world trade and the neoliberal reworking of national economies) and their effects (e.g., the debt crisis, the decay of a productive rural life, and the inevitable move toward the city) influence the extent to which people are free to create their own economic and social spaces in this world, particularly in the face of the ever-important modern marketplace that seems to foreclose any individual choice (Roberts 1994, 7). In this unit, we have looked at examples of the constraints and hardships that the modern market produces for those living informally on the margins of the city, including tenuous environmental conditions, compromised health, and unstable, undercompensated employment.

    The incredible resourcefulness of those affected by market reforms and the changing world economy is evident in our discussion of urban informality. We have highlighted not only the unfortunate, unequal, and exhausting experiences of lower-income inhabitants but also the opportunities the city offers and the close networks that are formed among people in order to foster daily survival. The coping strategies that we have been explored (i.e., the trash pickers of Cali, women’s double-days, carving out niches of "undesirable" space for shelter) contradict the prevalent stereotypes that low-income urban dwellers cannot escape their impoverished conditions because of their own laziness and naivete. Explaining urban poverty by blaming the victim is erroneous; today the source of poverty can be found in the structural processes operating in the world. In the face of those processes, the urban poor display great initiative and resilience despite deteriorating economic conditions.

    Viewing urban poverty in this manner helps us to see that, although the macroforces that we have detailed throughout this module are all-encompassing and constrain the choices individuals can make, individuals constantly work against these restraints in the attempt to adapt to ever-changing conditions. Perhaps they have taken their cue from the New World Order where flexibility is key. Or perhaps the New World Order can function as it does because of the flexible work forces in every country. Regardless of which is more true, people across the world are managing global change in various ways and with various effects. In Latin American urban locales, low-income workers are managing poverty while simultaneously participating in, affecting, and being influenced by global change -- a fascinating example of the interconnections among geographic scales, macroforces, and individual agency that has become part of our daily lives in the late twentieth century.