Informal labour, social mobilisation and protest in Iraq

在伊拉克最近的2019年全国抗议运动（“十月革命”）中，成千上万的伊拉克人走上街头，抗议战后政治经济的失败，其中包括伊拉克不断增长的非正规劳动者，他们现在占伊拉克人口的60%以上。本文以民族志田野调查为基础，探讨非正式劳工在伊拉克十月革命中扮演的角色及其原因。这篇论文反映了围绕全球化、不稳定工作和动员的更广泛辩论。以西方为中心的非正式劳动概念。——所谓的“无业游民”——认为这是一种与后期资本主义相关的现象。我认为，如果不从更广泛的角度来看待伊拉克不均衡融入全球市场的较长历史，以及工人机构在引导政治经济转型中所扮演的角色，就无法理解伊拉克非正规劳动者的存在和需求。

Summary (no more than 500 words) During Iraq's recent countrywide protest movement in 2019 (the "October Revolution"), thousands of Iraqis took to the streets to protest the failures of the post-war political economy, including Iraq's ever-growing population of informal labourers who now make up over 60% of the population. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis asks what role informal labour played in Iraq's October Revolution and why. The thesis speaks to broader debates surrounding globalisation, precarious work and mobilisation. Western-centric conceptualisations of informal labour. - the so-called "precariat" - suggest that this is a phenomenon associated with late-stage capitalism, I argue that both the existence, and demands, of Iraq's informal labourers cannot be understood without a broader view of Iraq's longer history of uneven integration into the global market and the role played by workers' agency in navigating political-economic transformations.