The United States is undergoing what in many ways is its most profound economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Great Recession, as it is popularly called, is having a devastating impact on U.S. workers. In this context, U.S. unions, workers’ most important advocates, have been vociferous in calling for financial reform, job creation, and other strong policy measures. However, whereas the Great Depression in the United States saw labor engaged in dramatic mass mobilizations, large-scale militant actions, and a powerful role in promoting policy changes, the current economic slump the U.S. labor movement has accomplished none of these things. At first glance, this absence may seem surprising. However, I will argue, expanding on an earlier analysis by Milkman (2010) that in fact, it is a relatively unsurprising outcome of both long-term historical trends and shorter-term conjunctural factors.

The paper makes this case in four sections. First, I briefly summarize the impact of the crisis on U.S. workers. Second, I describe the response of U.S. unions to the Great Recession, drawing extensively on online searches to document my findings. Third, I discuss the long-term and short-term reasons for the very limited nature of that response. In closing, I explore some alternative paths that may indeed lead U.S. labor to mount a more vigorous response in the months and years to come.

What new progressive currents exist in the politics of housing? The ideas, projects, and policies profiled here promoted market-regulatory and redistributive agendas that can be termed progressive – stepping forward within, but pointing beyond, the neoliberal capitalist housing system. I compare multiple political processes in the housing system across the United States and Germany between 2008-2023, only one chapter being a direct comparison. Chapter one examines struggles over ideas, or how mass public discourse on social media illustrates policy under discussion before, during, and after peak-Covid-19. Chapter two analyzes struggles to collaboratively build new housing models, where people aspired to create broad participation, sustainable architecture, social spaces, in some cases decommodification. Chapter three directly compares struggles to create offensive policy change in Los Angeles and Berlin by tenant movement organizations and coalitions, to enact rent controls, expropriation of landlord property, and more. The cities provided representative examples of the radically inclusive and escalating influence of tenant power on policy in RALLY Cities (Renter, Activist, Large, Lefty). Finally, chapter four addresses struggles to take the policy offensive to the federal level, profiling a tenant network that created an innovative housing vision and built strategic partnerships with politicians, who advanced a new housing policy agenda in Washington DC. Since 2008 tenant organizations have mobilized offensively against the capitalist housing system. My findings suggest that shifting debate across the United States concentrated increasingly on policy tools that strongly intervene in markets and protect tenants, suggesting that trends in new housing politics may have implications beyond RALLY Cities. The case exploring the intricate path to US national housing reform also signals the potential for broader change. At scales local to national, tenants have built coalitions with new digital tools, leveraged outside and inside strategies, and worked with allies to challenge institutional alignments among parties, interest groups, and agendas. In parallel with policy campaigns, on the community level groups developed projects to live out their politics, illustrating a hands-on dimension to the new housing politics that involves building a parallel solidarity economy, however imperfect. In varying forms, progressive housing politics is resurgent.

Retail jobs in Latin America straddle formal and informal employment, extending from global retail chains to self-employed street vendors. Retail employment thus presents an ideal setting for exploring two much-debated questions about the contrast between formal and informal work. First, under what circumstances is informal work to be preferred, and even actively chosen, over formal work? Second, what is the nature of transitions between formal and informal work, and how do people navigate and experience these transitions? In this paper, we use a three time-point (2006, 2007, 2008) longitudinal survey of retail workers in the state of Tlaxcala, Mexico, to address these questions. Using the longitudinal data, we can compare trajectories, not just point-in-time outcomes, of workers. A qualitative portion of the survey allows us to compare people’s experiences with their aspirations, and follow how those aspirations themselves shift over time.

The purpose of this study was to assess the attributes of vendors certified to sell produce in Los Angeles County farmers markets and relate these vendor attributes to goals of the “local food movement.” This movement is characterized by marked consumer preference for locally produced food. In particular, data were collected through qualitative interviews and quantitative producer output records to determine whether markets support an alternative production model akin to the local food movement, or whether markets supplement established mass-production oriented producers. Markets are considered to support a different kind of agricultural practice if participants in the markets are largely growers that rely on Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) marketing for a significant portion of their revenue. Because reliable responses to this line of inquiry are particularly rare, results are not conclusive. Instead, they are meant to draw inferences, and help to provide context for a more thorough analysis of the topic. This research demonstrates that farmer’s markets benefit both more large-scale producers and small-scale than is typical for farms in California, but is also particularly detrimental to mid-scale producers.

For those concerned with job quality in the United States, the retail industry commands attention. Retail is not only the largest low-wage industry in the country’s economy; it is the largest industry, period. It generates numerous entry level jobs for those with limited formal training. Hourly wages of nonsupervisory workers in retail languish at about three-quarters the national average. Retail is a very important employer of young workers. Its workforce is also disproportionately female. Women are concentrated in particular retail sub-sectors and some minority groups seem to remain employed in retail over time. At the same time, retail jobs—at least, those involving direct interaction with consumers—are geographically anchored, offering a potential leverage point for policies to improve job quality.

We place retailers’ business strategies at the center of our analysis and trace the connections between corporate strategy and job quality. We focus on three main dimensions of job quality: compensation; schedule and its impact on the work-life nexus; and hiring and promotion opportunities. We examine the composition of the workforce in retail jobs and the likely implications of changes in job quality for the workforce. We use descriptive statistics from the Current Population Survey and draw on a unique set of retail case studies of food and consumer electronics retailers we conducted during 2005-07. We focus on frontline jobs: cashiers, clerks, and baggers positions.

This dissertation is about climate resettlements, and the challenges to this practice, posed by the housing market in Bogota, Colombia. Specifically, it focuses on the resettlement strategy proposed by Petro’s city administration in its Bogota Humana development plan (2012-2016). Climate resettlements, unlike other types of resettlements, aim to relocate people who live in areas which climate model projections show are potentially at risk of disasters caused by floods, landslides and torrential rains. Implicated in Bogota Humana’s resettlement outcome are two defining features of the city’s housing market, a large and growing housing deficit, and the informal development of housing in the urban periphery. They raise questions of the particular housing strategy connected to the resettlements. How did the Petro administration negotiate the city’s housing deficit? How did it intervene in the city’s informal housing markets?

Borrowing from political ecology and the emerging critiques of social-ecological systems theory (Adger 2006, Pelling 2011, Hodson &Marvin 2010) this dissertation relies on a political and economic frame to examine the role played by the housing market in this case of climate resettlements. It argues that by considering the role of markets we can not only bring into view how social-ecological contradictions are generated, namely through the existing patterns in the spatial distribution of housing, but also how they might be resolved. The aim of the dissertation is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the political economy of climate resettlements by examining the case represented in Bogota Humana’s resettlement strategy.