Nik Theodore: Neoliberal Urbanism, Informal Work and Migrants

Nik Theodore is the geographer and planner at the University of Illinois Chicago who has studied for three decades how neoliberal urbanism produces labour precarity, and how informal and migrant workers organise to resist it. With Neil Brenner and Jamie Peck he formulated in 2002 the concept of actually existing neoliberalism, the idea that market policies are not applied in the abstract but in concrete cities, destroying earlier institutions and creating new ones; and with Abel Valenzuela he led the first national study of day labourers in the United States, On the Corner (2006), which counted more than a hundred thousand workers waiting for jobs each morning on city street corners.

Actually existing neoliberalism: destruction and creation in each city

Neoliberal urbanism, in his analysis, has two moments. The first is destructive: labour deregulation, cuts to social protection, privatisation of services and public land, competition among cities for investment. The second is creative: new institutions, development agencies, public-private partnerships, public order policies and flexible labour market policies that consolidate the new regime. Theodore shows that the process unfolds differently in each city, according to its inherited institutions and conflicts, which is why it must be studied in Chicago, Los Angeles or Johannesburg rather than as an abstract model.

The informal economy in the North: day labourers, domestic workers and wage theft

The informal economy is his main field. Against the idea that informal work belongs to the Global South, Theodore documented its expansion in wealthy cities: day labourers in construction and landscaping, domestic workers, couriers, employees of temp agencies and platforms who lack contracts, an effective minimum wage, insurance and protection against wage theft. His research with Valenzuela and others showed that half of day labourers had suffered non-payment in the previous two months and that injuries were frequent. Informality, he concludes, is not a residue but a product of flexibilisation.

Migrants and fear: Secure Communities and disciplined labour

Migrants concentrate that vulnerability. Theodore has studied how lack of immigration status and the delegation of immigration enforcement to local police, in programmes such as Secure Communities, turn undocumented workers into a labour force disciplined by fear, accepting conditions no one else would and not reporting abuse. His report Insecure Communities (2013) documented that nearly half of Latinos surveyed in four large cities avoided contacting the police for fear of questions about their status, with effects on everyone's safety.

Worker centres: rebuilding regulation from the corner

The response he studies is the worker centre. Theodore has followed the organisations of day labourers, domestic workers and migrants that negotiate wages on the corners, recover stolen pay, train in safety and press for local minimum wage and anti-wage-theft ordinances, such as those Chicago, Los Angeles and New York passed in the 2010s. Those organisations, he argues, rebuild from below the regulation neoliberalism dismantled, and show that the city can be a stage for social justice when those who sustain it with their labour organise.

Nik Theodore's lesson is that neoliberal urbanism is not only a policy of land or investment but a labour regime, and that the precarity of informal and migrant workers is as constitutive of the contemporary city as its towers. Recognising those workers, with an effective minimum wage, protection against wage theft, safety and status, is the urban policy that reduces inequality most, and worker centres are proof that such policy is won by organising on the corner.