Misclassification,Tipping and the Responsibilisation of Work in the Global South

Abstract

Workers are increasingly expected to take on responsibilities for those aspects of their wellbeing that were historically attended to by their employers – an unsettling trend that has been termed ‘responsibilisation’. While this phenomenon is manifesting across the globe and poses significant implications for both employers and employees, the effects of responsibilisation are perhaps most detrimentally felt by workers in the Global South, where there are relatively less robust systems of social welfare and fewer institutional protections available compared with the Global North. Two understudied mechanisms through which businesses enable responsibilisation are misclassification and tipping. Drawing on Ernesto’s reflexive narrative as a cerillo – a worker who bags groceries on a ‘voluntary’ basis for customers in a Mexico City supermarket – this article explores how businesses exploit these mechanisms for the purpose of absolving themselves of the responsibilities that they would otherwise have towards those classified as employees. Most troublingly, businesses achieve this absolution while, at the same time, exerting the type of organisational control over cerillos’ working lives that would be typically reflected in a contractual employer–employee relationship.