Street Vendors, Television Extras, Walmart Stockers, and More: Worker Subjectivity and Labor Processes in Atypical Work

This essay reviews Enrique de la Garza Toledo’s anthology on atypical work, titled Trabajo no clásico, organización y acción colectiva (Vols. 1 & 2) and situates it within the larger tradition of Latin American sociology of work. It argues that the anthology merges an emphasis on labor processes in a specific industry with an attention to the subjectivities and relationships that support worker agency and labor movements. Moreover, it posits that the rich case studies on atypical work in a wide spectrum of settings in Mexico City that are included in these two volumes provide grounded material for meso-level theorizing about the factors that shape atypical work and the ways that workers in those jobs respond to them.