Dear UBI Friends and Supporters,
We hope this email finds you well!
Please find below updates about UBI events and publications:
- Basic Income for Farmers invites you to the online launch event of their first discussion paper entitled: Sowing the seeds of stability: The case for a basic income for farmers, farmworkers and food producers in the UK
Where: Online (via action network and zoom)
When: Wednesday, March 13, 2024 • 6:00-7:30 PM (GMT)
SIGN UP at: https://actionnetwork.org/events/report-launch-sowing-the-seeds-of-stability-the-case-for-a-basic-income-for-farmers-farmworkers-and-food-producers-in-the-uk/
When considering what a healthy economy looks like, few elements are as fundamental and indispensable as farming and food production. The people who do the work that feeds us all face challenges that are as diverse as the crops they nurture and livestock they raise. Some of these challenges are inherent to their work and some are due to dysfunctions in how the profits of their labour are distributed.
The UK finds itself with farmers who are overworked and underpaid. Recent demonstrations in Europe have shown a similar pattern. If we are to build food systems that are fit to weather the changing political landscape, using farming practices that adequately respect the environment and that begin to truly address food insecurity we need to make farming a viable and healthy career.
The new report makes a strong case for exploring how a basic income could be applied to farming in the UK. It summarises the work that has been done so far and, perhaps most importantly, lays out the key areas and big questions the work to date has highlighted.
- The next session of Unconditional Basic Income Hypotheses, shortened in UBHypo:
UBHypo with Vibhor Mathur from Bath University UBI Beacon and India Basic Income Network
21st March 3pm-5pm (UK time)
Please sign up for the event here
Vibhor Mathur is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Bath and a Research Associate at the University of Cardiff.
Vibhor studies the transformative potential of basic income through pilots and advocacy in South Asia and Europe. His doctoral research on the WorkFREE project in Hyderabad, India, focuses on the role basic income can play in the fight for dignity, freedom and decent work.
As a member of Bath University UBI Beacon, Vibhor will explain the impact of basic income programs on people’s lives, perceptions and relationships both in India and the UK, and how this knowledge can be used to advocate for basic income.
- A book in critical theory presents a new conception of community and the struggle against capitalism. In Undoing Work, Rethinking Community: A Critique of the Social Function of Work (ILR Press, 2018), James A. Chamberlain argues that paid work and the civic duty to perform it substantially undermines freedom and justice. Chamberlain believes that to seize back our time and transform our society, we must abandon the deep-seated view that community is constructed by work, whether paid or not.
Chamberlain focuses on the regimes of flexibility and the unconditional basic income, arguing that while both offer prospects for greater freedom and justice, they also incur the risk of shoring up the work society rather than challenging it. To transform the work society, he shows that we must also reconfigure the place of paid work in our lives and rethink the meaning of community at a deeper level.
- You may be interested in the video recording ‘Maricá’s Citizens Basic Income: Unconditional cash transfers paid in a municipal digital currency’ (22/02/2024). Fabio Waltenberg (Associate Professor, Universidade Federal Fluminense in Niterói, Brazil) spoke about the Citizens’ Basic Income (Renda Básica de Cidadania), an unconditional income transfer scheme that benefits almost 50% of the 200,000 inhabitants of Maricá, Brazil. He described the evolution of the program and the singularity of the local currency in which transfers are paid (the mumbuca). Finally he provided an overview of preliminary evidence of its effects and outlined their research agenda.
- In 2022 the Welsh Government launched their world leading basic income pilot for care leavers. The pilot will continue until the summer of 2025 and the evaluation will be published in a series of reports between now and 2027. Autonomy and Basic Income Conversation have produced a briefing ‘The Welsh basic income pilot for care leavers: a look at the first interim results’ summarizing the first report.
In solidarity and best wishes
reinhard on behalf of UBI Lab Leeds