Homeless Youth Labor Continuum: Working in Formal and Informal Economies from Highland Guatemala to San Francisco, California

Abstract

Homeless youth are seldom understood as workers, but documented and undocumented homeless young people are working continuously in multiple economies to meet essential needs. This chapter draws on original ethnographic, participatory, and mixed methods research conducted in Guatemala, Mexico, western Canada, and the United States including the Labor Memoir Project and Youth Trek study. The first person perspectives of homeless youth as economic actors are at the center, disrupting traditional divisions in the discussion of formal and informal sector work. The Labor Continuum offers an economic rubric through which a range of income-generating practices and types of labor can be evaluated side by side. Despite the limitations of certain aspects of child labor laws, homeless young people participate in multiple economies, often simultaneously, doing volunteer work, transactional labor exchanging for goods and services, wage labor primarily in the low paid service sector, piece work, cottage industries, and work in the informal sector in criminalized, quasi-legal, and legal forms of work. Income-generating activities include a wide range of employment: work in restaurants and retail; day labor construction; migrant and transnational work transporting produce and sewing clothes for garment manufacturers; seasonal agricultural work (such as fruit or marijuana picking); busking, selling crafts, selling drugs, and reselling merchandise over the internet; domestic and relational labor including working as a caregiver, providing sexual services or companionship; and housecleaning or janitorial services. This testimony of youth workers about a wide variety of jobs offers insight into the challenges homeless young people face, allowing for a reevaluation of assumptions regarding levels of exploitation in formal and informal sectors and casting light on the economic decision making of youth.