The Disrupted Passage from an Agrarian Rural to an Industrial Urban Workforce in Most Countries in the Global South

Christoph Scherrer

Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 2018, vol. 7, issue 3, 301-319

Abstract: In many late industrializing countries, most of those who leave agriculture do not find gainful employment. In fact, many of the late industrializers are prematurely de-industrializing. Explanations for the lack of absorption capacity of industries and productive services range from overregulated labour markets to globalization. On the basis of a comparison between the conditions prevalent among the early industrializers and present-day latecomers to industry and advanced services, this article highlights other factors: demographic pressures, restrictions on migration, productivity differentials vis-Ã -vis the Global North and the few successful late industrializers and the constraints on the promotion of industry stemming from neoliberal globalization. It also points to challenges for a state-led industrial policy stemming from the colonial heritage like lack of societal trust.

Keywords: Labour markets; underemployment; late industrializers; agricultural crisis; Global South (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2277976018801099 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:agspub:v:7:y:2018:i:3:p:301-319

DOI: 10.1177/2277976018801099

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy from Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().