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Underground employment: Analyzing the job quality of New York City subway dancersLeanne Roncolato and Cairynne KohMarch 2018Abstract: This paper is the first to analyze the New York City subway phenomenon known as “show time” as a form of informal employment. Using an individuals-in-relation framework, drawing on Marxist and feminist economic perspectives, we investigate the job quality of New York City subway dancers. Our data comes from 34 in-depth interviews conducted in the summer of 2016. We contextualize earnings, hours and conditions of work by considering the social relations and power dynamics in which they are embedded. Beyond the pecuniary motivations, many interviewees discussed subway dancing as a way to escape contexts of violence and negativity. While dancers articulated advantages of this work, such as setting one’s own schedule and getting quick money, they also articulated disadvantages, most notably the risk of being arrested. Through our analysis of this particular work, insights are gained into the broader context of work relations and inequality in the New York City.JEL codes: B50, J46, J15Key Words: Informal employment; Job quality; Marx; Feminist economics; RaceIntroductionWhen passengers on the New York City subway hear the phrase “What time is it?” they know what’s coming next—show time! Passengers move to the side, a few words of introduction are given, the music is switched on and the show begins. Dancers entertain with fancy footwork, back flips, pole acrobatics, hat tricks and sometimes a few shoe tricks as well. Before the train reaches the next stop, a hat is passed around to collect money. Once the train doors open, the dancers express their gratitude and move on to the next cart. While subway performers are well known in New York City, this activity is seldom seen as employment. However, dancing on the subway is a type of informal employment that provides both income and community for many young men. In this paper we analyze the job quality of subway dancing by combining standard measures of job quality with an individuals-in-relation framework developed from a synthesis of feminist and Marxist economic perspectives (Paula England 2003, Leanne Roncolato and John Willoughby 2017). Our work contributes to literature on the economic experiences of young men of color in the United States, and is relevant to policy makers interested in mitigating social and economic inequality.Our analysis is based on 34 interviews conducted with subway dancers in New York City during July of 2016. Our results reveal many positive attributes to this type of work, such as the ability to choose one’s own schedule and determine the pace of work. However, this type of self-employment also comes with high risks such as injuries, encounters with the police and unpredictable earnings. Our full analysis considers how power, social relations and context all impact the experience of being a subway dancer in New York City. Analyzing job quality with this broader framework offers insights into not only the individual experiences of work but the broader context of work relations in New York City. Our results therefore offer insights into the option of informal self-employment for marginalized populations living in high-income countries.Literature reviewInformal employment has been debated within the field of development economics for several decades (Keith Hart 1973, Gary Fields 1990, William Maloney 1999, 2004, Arup Mitra 2005, David Kucera and Leanne Roncolato 2008). While often the focus is on developing contexts, informal employment affects the economies of developed countries as well.1 The same year Keith Hart published his seminal piece on informal activities in Ghana, Patricia Ferman and Louis Ferman published an article analyzing the “irregular economy” in urban contexts in the United States (Hart 1973, Ferman and Ferman 1973). Ferman and Ferman argue that informal employment in the United States emerges from imperfect markets and structural economic barriers for “low-income and minority group populations” (Ferman and Ferman 1973, 12). We situate our analysis of the job quality of subway dancers within the New York City context of economic and racial inequality.Within more contemporary literature, a few academic pieces specifically examine informality in the context of New York City (Saskia Sassen-Koob 1989, Ryan Devlin, 2011, Gregg Kettles, 2014), but no work to our knowledge has examined the experience of subway dancers. Sudhit Venkatesh (2006) analyzes the experience of “street hustlers” in Maquis Park in Chicago, IL, and articulates the tension that emerges over public space between the hustlers and the general public (Venkatesh 2006, 170). A few of the dancers we spoke to specifically referred to subway dancing as a hustle (one dancer rejected the “hustle” label.) While there are some similarities between the street hustlers Venkatesh (2006) discusses and subway dancers, it’s important to consider how performance on a subway is unique from performing/hustling in a public park. The subway is an excludable space, i.e. people must pay to enter it. However, similar to a park the subway is non-rival. Once entering the subway, the space is expected to be shared. In the analysis below, we discuss how dancers deal with this tension in a such a space. One type of dance-related work that has been widely studied is the work of erotic dancers (Suzanne Bouclin 2006, Katherine Frank 2007, Katy Pilcher 2009, Sharon Mavin and Gina Grandy 2013). The concepts agency and intersectionality used to analyze the job quality of erotic dancers are also relevant to our study of subway dancers (Boucin, 2006, Mavin and Grandy 2013). Mavin and Grandy (2013) in their work on women dancing in UK strip clubs discuss how the dancers are both exploited and empowered. The role of financial constraints is critical in their analysis. Similarly, Boucin (2006) discusses how choosing erotic dancing brings certain “freedoms” but also has challenges. Boucin (2006) using the language of intersectionality, first coined in Crenshaw (1991), examines how women’s gender, race and class all impact their access and experience of work. Not all erotic dance is classified as informal employment, it depends on the employment context and nature of dancer contracts. Still, the complexity of the employment experience and the identity-related barriers to entry offers some insights into the work of informal subway dancers. Analyzing informal employment in developing contexts, Fields (1990) distinguishes between “easy-entry” informal employment, defined as low quality work usually undertaken as a survival strategy, and “upper-tier” informal employment, defined as higher quality self-employment characterized by some barriers to entry. Similar two-type categorizations have been proposed by Gustav Ranis and Frances Stewart (1999) and Isabel Gunther and Andrey Launov (2006). Maloney (1999) uses the terminology “voluntary” versus “involuntary”, which Kucera and Roncolato (2008) argue is problematic given that informal employment is most often situated in the contexts of poverty (Ranis and Stewart 1999, Maloney 1999, Isabel Gunther and Andrey Launov 2006, Kucera and Roncolato 2008). Typically, it is assumed that the greater the barriers to entry, the higher the quality of work within informal employment. However, given the multiple dimensions of job quality there can be significant variation in job quality across all types of informal employment. In our analysis of the job quality below, we explore whether subway dancing can easily be categorized within the two-tier system of categorization typically used in developing contexts. We consider not only the barriers to entry typical discussed regarding informal self-employment, namely capital. We also consider how skill in dance as well as racial and gender identity may function as barrier to entry for this type of work. Measuring job quality within informal employment is particularly difficult given the nature of employment arrangements and scarcity of data. Maria Floro and John Messier (2008) develop a job quality index, which adapts the decent work framework of the International Labor Organization to better measure job quality of the informal employment experiences.2 Working with quantitative data from specifically designed surveys, Paula Kantor, Uma Rani and Jeemol Unni (2006) and Maria Floro and John Messier (2011) both measure job quality among the informally employed in developing contexts. High quality quantitative data is critical to improving our understanding of informal employment, however some information is inevitably lost through the quantification of work experiences. We chose to collect and analyze qualitative data in order to capture important nuances and complications of working in informal employment. The individuals-in-relation framework, designed for job-specific analysis, enables a thorough exploration of this rich qualitative data, considering the interaction of identity with context, social relations, and power. Analytical frameworkAssessing job quality among the self-employed has both theoretical and methodological challenges. Most neoclassical approaches to job quality concentrate on observables such as earnings, hours and the conditions of work that effect physical health and safety (i.e. see Maloney 1999, 2004, Douglas and Shepherd 2002, Pages and Lucia 2008). While neoclassical approaches also consider autonomy at work and exposure to risk in terms of income variability and job security, the agent in the neoclassical approach is a utility-maximizing individual. When job quality is understood in the context of a utility maximization problem, the non-pecuniary aspects of one’s job only have value in terms of how it affects an individual’s reservation wage. We most often see this logic emerge in the theory of compensating wage differentials, which has roots in Adam Smith’s argument that jobs with poor conditions and/or high risks in a competitive labor market will have higher wages (Dorman 1996).3 The narrow focus on the individual utility-maximizing agent in this approach can be limiting, especially when the role of work in an individual’s life is interconnected with identity and community membership. Specifically, absent from the neoclassical approach is consideration of context, social relations and power.In our analysis, in addition to earnings, hours and conditions of work we consider context, power and social relations, utilizing the individuals-in-relation framework of job quality developed in Roncolato and Willoughby (2017). The term “individuals-in-relation” was first introduced by Paula England in 2003, calling for economic analysis, which considers humans as individuals as well as members of collective units in relation with each other. The specific individuals-in-relation framework used in our analysis pulls from both Marxist and feminist economic discourses to develop a more complete understanding of job quality. Roncolato and Willoughby’s general diagram of the framework is shown in Figure 1. The framework calls for not only a consideration of the individual components of context, power and social relations, but also for an analysis of the intersection of these elements (Roncolato and Willoughby 2017). [Figure 1 around here]We first define each individual component, before discussing interactions. Context refers to national and local socio-economic conditions. Both feminist and Marxist economics advocate for analysis beyond the individual economic agent to the institutions and sociopolitical context in which the agent is situated (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 2011/1844, Marianne Ferber and Julie Nelson 1993). In our analysis attention to context means a consideration of the neighborhoods in which dancers live as well as the subway lines where they choose to perform. Context also includes the quality of education and formal job opportunities for young men of color in New York City and the broader system of racial inequality in the United States.In Marxist analysis social relations encompasses all the relations that sustain the system of production. It includes relations between labor and the owners of capital, relations between workers, as well as relations between those who are employed and those who are not. Social relations are central to a Marxian understanding of job quality. When a worker has ownership of the means of production and creative control of the process, humanization is achieved. In fact, for Marx, human ability to work and create is what distinguishes us from animals (Marx and Engels 2011/1844). Once workers lose control over the means of production and labor process, alienation, exploitation and immiseration of workers occurs (Marx 1990/1885). The social relations of subway dancing are more complicated than the dualistic framework capital versus labor. Subway dancers have freedom in the sense that they have no boss, choose the days and hours to perform. However, Marx argues that if workers lack material security their work cannot be considered “non-alienating” work (Mesazaros 1970, Marx and Engels 2011/1844). While self-employed subway dancers may be free from “the interfering power” of a boss (Mesazaros 1970, 154, Marx and Engels 2011/1844), the majority still struggle with material security. Furthermore, we must consider the unique of the “product” they are producing—a dance. Subway dancers own their bodies which they use to create the performance they sell. In Capital Vol. 1, Marx writes, “...instead of being able to sell commodities in which his labour has been objectified, must rather be compelled to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power which exists only in his living body” (Marx, 1990/1885, p. 272). Therefore, if the only thing the dancers have to sell is their labor power, this is a sign of alienation. However, the “commodity” being produced is a dance performance and the property rights of this performance are ambiguous. The subway dancers do not own the space in which they perform. The city is the owner of the capital—the subway cars. The space is designed to be shared by all those who pay for a subway fare, and thus is a public-owned club good. It is not clear that the dancers have lost all ownership of what their bodies have been used to produce.The fact that dancers do not own or even rent the space in which they perform, leads to significant constraints on their freedom. They are thus subject to constraints associated with doing an informal illegal activity and have to navigate relations with the police. Train passengers are their customers and they must deal with both positive and negative reactions. We also consider the relations between dancers. Cooperation and competition exist simultaneously, but the sense of community within a given team of dancers appears to supersede competition between individuals. Finally, although a full analysis of power is outside the scope of this paper, the analysis here identifies particular aspects of power relevant to job quality. The first is the subway dancer’s power over his or her daily life in terms of the ability to control the pace, schedule and nature of the work process, this relates also to social relations discussed above. The second is a person’s sense of empowerment (or lack of empowerment) as a subway dancer in terms of the ability to affect constraints of his/her life, which relates to context. We consider how working as a subway dancer can be both empowering and oppressive. Feminist economic theory of agency creates the space to move beyond the dichotomy of either alienating vs. non-alienating work constructed in Marxist theory (Naila Kabeer 2000). Agency is when individuals or a collective exercise their power, however limited it might be, to impact the conditions their lives. The concept of agency allows us to rethink the dynamics of power and social relations surrounding work. Ownership over the commodity being produced does need to be a precondition for empowerment. Among subway dancers, we observed creativity in the face of poverty and pursuit of freedom under strict constraints.Power interacts with identity in both Marxist and feminist economics, however in different ways. Power as it relates to class conflict is critical in Marxist analysis. Feminist economics is critical of Marx’s limited understanding of power, as feminist economics argues we must look at oppression outside of the market and consider identity beyond class (Nancy Folbre 1993). Growth in feminist economic theory has enabled intersectional analysis to consider the ways in which gender, race, class and other identities interact to impact economic behavior and outcomes (Brewer, Rose M., Cecilia A. Conrad, and Mary C. King 2002, Lisa Saunders and William Darity 2003, Bouclin 2006). Our analysis below embraces this intersectional approach, considering the ways in which multiple identities interact to impact subway dancers work experience. We analyze the ways in which power structures in both local and national context constrain the freedom of subway dancers and limit their job quality as young men of color. MethodologyOur data emerges from 34 semi-structured interviews, lasting approximately 30 to 60 minutes each. We recruited four participants through our personal contacts, 14 by approaching individuals on the subway, and the remaining 16 participants through a snowball sampling method.4 The snowball sample method is effective given that the activity of dancing on the subway is illegal and thus individuals are more likely to speak with someone who a friend has referred. The possible bias of the snowball sampling method is we were more likely to speak to dancers who had more personal connections and social capital. Thus, they may have emphasized the role of community more strongly during the interviews. Since we also recruited participants by approaching dancers we ran into by chance, our sample also includes dancers who are new to subway dancing and less connected. We have given pseudonyms to all interviewees to protect their identities. Data & ContextLite Feet, the primary style of dance performed on the subway, emerged from Harlem and the Bronx as a new hip-hop style in 2005 (Emma Warren 2013, Kenneth Christensen 2012). Leaders in the Lite Feet dance movement organized competitions where teams of Lite Feet dancers would battle each other (Scott Carthy 2014). Several interviewees began dancing on the subway as a means to pay the entrance fees for these battles. Through this process, dancers realized the money made on the train was more than the prize money from battles. As awareness of the earnings potential spread, Lite Feet became an underground phenomenon. The majority of young men we interviewed were between the ages of 18 and 23. Three of our interviewees were 25, one was 26 and the oldest was 27. We also interviewed a seven-year-old, a 10-year-old and a 16-year-old. We spoke with 14 dancers from the Bronx, eight from Brooklyn, three from Harlem, one from Washington Heights, one person who lives in Connecticut but grew up in the Bronx, and one person who is homeless and spends most of his time in Manhattan. According to the 2014 poverty data from New York City’s Center for Economic Opportunity, the poverty rate among non-Hispanic blacks in NYC was 21.5 percent and among Hispanics of all races was 24 percent, while the poverty rate for non-Hispanic whites was 14.4 percent.5 In 2014, the poverty rate was highest in the Bronx at 26.1 percent, followed by Brooklyn, 21.9 percent, and Queens, 20.4 percent (NYC Center for Economic Opportunity 2017).6 Figure 2 is a crime map of NYC, showing murders per 1000 residents from January 1, 2015 until December 31, 2016. The highest rates of murder are in Northern Manhattan (Harlem), the Bronx, and certain areas of Brooklyn.7[Figure 2 around here]The racial and economic inequality of New York City is symptomatic of larger context of inequality in the United States. Employment statistics provide insight into the racial inequality and the economic vulnerability of young men of color in the United States. In the fourth quarter of 2016, the unemployment rate was 29.4 percent for African American males ages 16 to 19 and 22.7 percent for Hispanic/Latino males in this age group. The unemployment rate for white males ages 16 to 19 was a much lower 15.6 percent (BLS 2017).8Racial inequality persists in the United States due to a set of institutional forces, most notably the criminal justice system (Michelle Alexander 2011). The term “the school-to-prison pipeline” has emerged to highlight the links between the criminal justice system and education system in the United States.9 Specific concerns over the quality of education experienced by the young men in our sample are discussed in more detail in the results section below. Table 1 shows the wide range of education levels among our respondents. The majority of interviewees completed high school, with the exception of two respondents who dropped out of high school. The remaining interviewees are either currently in school or taking GED classes. One person has recently graduated from community college and five are currently enrolled in some level of postsecondary education. Table 2 compares education attainment in our sample to US census data. [Table 1 around here][Table 2 around here]We did not specifically ask respondents about household income, but we did ask about other sources of income in their homes. There was a wide range of answers to this question. Most people (all but three) have at least one other family member who is employed. One person listed public assistance as the other source of income for his household.10 Table 3 summarizes the responses to the question about whether interviewees are currently doing another form of paid work. Most interviewees (17) are not doing other paid work. [Table 3 around here]ResultsEarningsTypically, the dancers will perform in groups of two to four. After they perform, one of the dancers passes a hat around to collect money and then move on to the next cart. At the end of the day, they evenly divide the money up between all dancers.10 When we asked how much money they made in a typical day, individuals reported a range. The size of the range varied by individual. In Table 4, we report the low and upper end of these ranges. The most common response for the low end was between $20 and $40. One person reported only making $8 one day. The most common response on the upper end was $100. Many of those who reported above $100, only mentioned a bit above, i.e. $110 or $125. Some were vague and said “100 plus.” We also asked interviewees what was the most money they ever made in a day. One respondent said he made $500 on a Christmas day after dancing for four hours. Another respondent told a story of making $500 after dancing from 10am to 8pm one summer. Others gave very specific amounts such as $215 and $367 as the most money they made in a given day. Some of the guys who have been dancing a long time explain that they used to be able to make more money. Javion, who has been dancing in the subway for five years said, “It was like a quick hour and just like 100 dollars or so, in the snap of a finger and I’d just be like, damn it comes quick… now the way it’s set up is like a lot of people is like losing love for it because the kids up, they doin’ crazy things.” (Javion)Others expressed similar sentiments regarding the current oversaturation of subways with dancers and the irresponsibility of some dancers.[Table 4 around here]We asked all interviewees how they used the money they made dancing. The response to this question revealed a range in degree of financial insecurity among the dancers. While some used the money for new clothes and sneakers, others said the money was used for food, paying bills or other basic necessities. Others talked about using the money to invest in their teams, i.e. with business cards and matching gear.HoursJust as earnings varied, so too did reported hours. Most respondents gave some range for a “typical” day. Responses are summarized in Table 5. Some dancers have very specific routines and schedules, i.e. they start dancing in the early afternoon, leave the subway during rush hour and head back down for more dancing in the evening. Others said that they would only stay out dancing if they were “feeling it” or if the “money was coming fast.” One respondent said each day he sets a monetary goal and then dances until he reaches it. Some dancers expressed anxiety about being on the subway too much and pushing their luck in terms of getting arrested. This also influenced the number of days that certain dancers decided to perform per week. While nine respondents said they danced every day, the majority selected particular days to perform on the subway. The most popular days to dance are on the weekends and holidays because this is when passengers are in a better mood and are more likely to give money. The majority of respondents said they danced all year round, but dancers prefer the summer and holiday season when tourism is higher.[Table 5 around here]Conditions of Work Dancing on the subway is physically intensive work. Dancers must balance while the train is moving and the pole tricks require significant upper body and abdominal strength. Five respondents spoke about performing on the subway as a form of exercise and a way of staying fit. Four interviewees explained that dancing relieves stress and is a creative outlet. Smalls, who is currently homeless specifically said, “Dancing is my escape.” Despite the positive attitudes towards dancing, 25 of the 34 interviewees had been injured at some point dancing on the train. The most common injury reported was a sprained ankle. More serious injures included being knocked unconscious after falling during a pole trick.Performing on the subway also requires mental fortitude, particularly when dealing with disgruntled passengers who either do not wish to move out of the way or would prefer to be in a silent train car. Many dancers spoke about their strategies to stay positive even when the passengers are negative. Unfortunately, these strategies do not always succeed. We did hear of conflicts between passengers and dancers. One conflict resulted in a dancer being cut in the arm by an angry passenger.More than injuries, the primary risk associated with subway dancing is getting arrested. The crackdown by the police started in 2014. According to our interviewees, usually on the first offense or if the dancer is under 18 the police will give a DAT (Desk Appearance Ticket). If caught again, the police will handcuff the individual, confiscate the amp and money and book the dancer overnight. After being released from booking, the money is returned if it’s less than $100. If it’s more than $100 the money is held as evidence.12 Dancers are given a slip of paper and they can collect the money from the evidence locker in the precinct in which they were arrested (sometimes in inconvenient locations). Charges levied against subway dancers range from reckless endangerment to creating excessive noise.13 Twenty-three of our 34 interviewees had been arrested, many multiple times. When we asked 25-year-old, Ervin, if he would recommend dancing on the subway to kids and other young men, he felt conflicted. He sees dancing as a wonderful outlet, but also said “I wouldn't want them to end up getting a record or even touching cuffs.”The presence of the police and fear of being arrested was a concern for many dancers. When asked, “What is your least favorite part of the dancing on the subway?” The two most common responses were the cops and negative attitudes of passengers. Dancers have developed many strategies for dealing with the cops. They will warn each other if there are cops out on a particular day. Others will go around the car and ask individuals if they are cops before the performance begins. Benny, an 18-year old from Brooklyn, discussed this issue,“It makes me feel like I'm in the movie Footloose. Right. We are getting arrested for dancing and then like when I talk to gang members when I go back to Coney Island to see my family, they will be like oh you smart cause when I was little that could have got me out of trouble.” (Benny)In the following sections, we analyze job quality from an individuals-in-relation framework. Intersectionality and identityThe first element of the individuals-in-relation framework we examine is how the many facets of dancer’s identity influenced their access to and experience of work. We asked dancers why they thought subway dancers were predominantly black and Latino men. Luke, a 20-year-old from Harlem, responded,“...most black males go through like a lot of problems, maybe something like family pass away maybe or the brother got shot… you know dancing was just a stress reliever and since we all from Harlem you know Harlem it’s a very historical borough, it was basically known for dancing and music.” (Luke)Oscar, a 23-year-old from the Bronx, responded, “it's just the way we're brought up, the communities that we grow up in. It's kinda hard and where we grow up at, what people are doing is, more than likely they’re hustling.” David, a 20-year-old from the Bronx, similarly responded, “Cause where we come from, we gonna have to get it regardless. If we don't get it, we can't eat. So that's why most black kids and Spanish people do it.” Two interviewees from Harlem, responded to the question by explaining that music and dancing was part of their history. On the one hand, interviewees spoke about dancing on the subway as something that would be expected of young men of color in New York City. Others discussed dancing on the subway as a way of creating an alternative narrative of what it meant to be young and black in New York. Kenny, a 20-year-old from Harlem, explained that he didn’t like that “colored individuals are made target due to the fact that we are looked at as negativity,” and saw dancing as a way to be “inspirational” and push back against this negativity. When we asked Anthony, an 18-year-old from Harlem, what was his favorite part of dancing on the subway he said, “Just getting’ the smiles and having children look at me a different way, because a lot of black males is in gangs and all that.” Some passengers however do not view dancers as positive role models. Fido and Smalls talked about a friend who was harassed on the train with racial slurs. Luke a 20-year-old from Harlem, talked about his frustrations, “…the negative energy because you know what, us as blacks, as black young men we just sign to fail. So it's like when people see as ‘oh here go these dancers dancing on the trains.’ I could probably be doing a lot worse with my life. I could be killing somebody. I could be robbing and stealing. I could be just doing something out of the ordinary and you know so I just dance because I love to dance.” (Luke)It was not only dancers racial and class identity which impacted their experience of work, but also their gender identity. American norms related to heteronormative masculinity influenced their conceptualizations of work and identity. The young men expressed pride in being able to make money on their own and be independent. Eight interviewees said that they used the money from subway dancing to help support one or more family member. Many dancers discussed the physical strength needed to perform on the subway and were clearly confident in their bodies. In fact, five interviews specifically commented that they enjoyed getting attention from women on the subway.We asked dancers, why there weren’t women dancing on the subway. A few interviewees corrected us by telling us there were some women who did. However, we did not see any women dancing during our time in New York City and when we asked for references for additional people to talk to no one gave us any women’s names. Others explained that women didn’t have the physical strength or were too shy and risk-averse to dance on the subway. One interviewee argued that it’s easier for women to get formal jobs and that women were more willing to stay at 9-to-5 jobs. Below we investigate why subway dancers had negative attitudes towards 9-to-5 jobs. Another dancer explained that given that dancing on the subway involves pole tricks, women might be concerned about it being perceived as sexual. The reference to women doing pole tricks at a strip clubs is interesting given that other interviewee thought women didn’t have the physical strength to do this type of dancing. These responses revealed a range in attitudes towards gender and sexism as it related to their form of work. What became clear through these conversations that one barrier to entry for this type of work was gender. Men appeared to have much easier access to joining dance crews and becoming a subway dancer. Power and ContextWe asked all respondents, “Why did you start dancing on the subway?” While many mentioned money (15 out of 34), this was not the only reason. Nine of the 34 respondents told stories about how they knew others who were dancing on the subway so they decided or were recruited to join. As mentioned above, many started Lite Feet dancing as a part of a team for battles and then subsequently realized they could make money on the train. Ervin explains, “It never was like, a lifestyle choice. It just happened.” In general, dancers describe low financial barriers to entry. They just needed to know someone who had an amp. One dancer described starting out dancing without music, explaining that one partner would keep a beat while the other person danced. The more significant barrier to entry is the level of dance skills. Interviewees said they learned to dance from watching You Tube videos and or from practicing with friends.Seven of the 34 respondents specifically said they started dancing to stay out of trouble. They articulated dancing on the subway and going to Lite Feet battles as an alternative to joining a gang or engaging in other illegal activities. Even though some people did not give “staying out of trouble” as the answer to why they started dancing, the theme emerged in other parts of the interview. For example, Oscar, 23-year-old from the Bronx said, “So I would rather dance on the train than say, sell drugs and get in more trouble than I'm already getting in. It's like either way I’m taking a risk, dancing on the train or selling drugs, but I'm at more risk if I'm selling drugs.” (Oscar)Fido, a 21-year-old from Brooklyn, explicitly said, “If I didn’t dance, I would be in jail.” Two interviewees said they were bored at home and dancing on the subway gave them something to do. This can also be understood as a way of keeping them out of trouble, although in our summary of responses in Table 6, we keep these as distinct responses. Jichaun, a 20-year-old from the Bronx, also discussed the benefits of dance,“… there is a lot of things that have been happening to people that have stopped dancing on the train. Like couple of my friends that stopped dancing on the train they either dead or they locked up. So, I feel like it benefits New York in a huge way like it keeps me out of trouble honestly. Yeah cause I almost lost my life twice. “ (Jichaun)Six interviewees were explicit that they enjoyed dancing on the subway and thus were happy to make money doing something they would be doing anyway. Kareem, a 26-year-old from the Bronx, described his experience,“So I went with my friend one day and he’s performing and he’s making money off of it. I’m like, I didn’t know you could make money off of stuff you love doing… So as I kept doing it, I’m not gonna lie, I messed up a lot of times and I just – that’s what made me want to perfect my craft... And then, as I kept doing it, I started loving it. I fell in love with it.” (Kareem)Two interviewees claimed they dance in order to network or get exposure. Many dancers aspire to turn the informal work dancing on the subway into a formal career in entertainment. One person specifically said he started dancing because he wanted to belong somewhere. While he was the only one to articulate this as the primary reason for starting to dance, in responses to other questions the importance of community building emerged. [Table 6 around here]The decision to dance on the subway seems driven not only by the amount of money, but also the timing of money. Fifteen of the 34 people we interviewed discussed making fast money on the train, particularly in comparison to payment from a formal job. Ervin explained, “The best feeling is that you don’t have to wait a week or two weeks for a check.” Frankie, a 25-year-old who is working on his GED and is on public assistance, said, “Instead of waiting for that monthly while I am doing that I could be getting fast money while I am still in school.” The desire to receive money quickly may in part be reflective of the context of financial insecurity and the need for immediate resources. Furthermore, given the contexts in which most of these young men live, focusing on the short term rather than investing in the long term is not surprising. For example, Jordan and Benny, high school students from Brooklyn, told us the story of their teenage friend being shot in the apartment below. Wish, a 21-year-old from Brooklyn, told us “most of my friends are either dead, in jail, or in college.” This suggests that having a formal job out of high school does not seem like a common option. We asked dancers about the quality of their high school education and 15 interviewees explicitly said they did not think that their high school education was useful.14 Fido, a 21-year-old from Brooklyn explained, “you know what I mean it’s not worth it. A lot of kids right now going into fights getting pills over stupid shit, like drama and it’s because of people not teaching them. … I see a lot of youth who wants to learn and nobody teaches them and they wonder why their kids are so outrageous and crazy.” (Fido)Barry, a 25-year-old from Washington Heights, discussed low returns to even a college degree, “I know people that went to great D1 colleges, Division One colleges, come home and got no job, no job. How did a kid all his life work so hard to get to university, go out of pocket and to get none of that back?” (Barry).If these young men are not observing positive returns to education while simultaneously seeing other young men in their communities killed and jailed, then choosing quick money over investing in education makes sense. This decision is an example of these young men exercising their agency within a context of strict constraints. Not all respondents had a negative attitude towards school and the perception of usefulness of a formal education varied across the sample. Similarly, attitudes towards future employment varied. Three quarters of the interviewees dreamed of pursuing an entertainment-related career. Half specifically wanted to pursue dance-related work. A quarter of the interviewees articulated desires to shift career paths entirely. For individuals who either worked in formal jobs or previously held formal jobs we asked how the experience of work compared. In addition to differences with regard to money, they also spoke about the independence and flexibility associated with dancing on the subway and the ability to express themselves creatively.Wish, the 21-year-old from Brooklyn, spoke about how he hated his experience working at McDonalds. Jared, a 22-year-old from Harlem, told us about his work at JC Penny. He said he liked interacting with the customers, but he didn’t like having a supervisor. He explains, “people just be feeling like you know they got so much over you because of their title like supervisor and manager.” Crisp, a 26-year-old from Brooklyn, talked about his formal work experience, “But me being like an artist, like freelance type, it’s like that really doesn’t always excite me too much because I will just be there and then I’ll just be day dreaming all the time, like ‘I wish I was somewhere dancing right now,’ … the first 9 to 5 I had, I got fired like my third day… I got fired my third day but I wanted to get fired.” (Crisp)Ervin similarly explained, “me personally, I was never really type of person to have a job behind a desk kinda guy. … I’m an entertainer basically, so that's how it is.” Oscar, the 23-year-old from the Bronx, felt conflicted,“I would prefer dancing ‘cause dancing is what I love to do. But I would prefer the other. I mean there’s pros and cons to both. The only time I would consider getting a real job is because I can't dance forever and I can’t put on my resume, anything like that. And I get arrested for it, so that's the bad part about it.”Frankie, a 25-year-old who has a child, said,“I do want a job I ain’t gonna lie. I don’t wanna dance for the rest of my life I feel it all in my bones. I feel sore. You come across people that feel like you are not doing nothing with your life you just dancing on the train.” (Frankie)Javion, the dancer who now dances for the Brooklyn Nets, expressed his regrets about dropping out of high school and blames his decision on dance,“Honestly it was dancing, the reason why. It was like I was so caught up in the money… back then I was just so caught up in the money that I just stopped and I don't know why, why. I used to have fun. It was like, school was good for me. Like, I used to love it.” (Javion)However, Javion did discuss the quality of his high school, “Yeah, yeah, Bronx schools is horrible. I just loved like, to play sports and stuff. So it was like school was always fun for me.”Kordell, a 21-year-old who graduated high school and now books some formal gigs in addition to dancing on the subway, also expressed some regrets,“well I would have never started dancing on the train because it feels like it ruined my life. I feel like I would already have a job if I never did that. I got too used to it.” (Kordell)The perspectives of Kordell and Javion are unique in the sample. Most dancers expressed positive feelings about their choice to dance on the subway, particularly as an alternative to a more violent lifestyle.15 Jordan, the 16-year-old from Brooklyn said,“…it’s teens shooting teens that’s what it is now… You got the grown men that are selling guns to the teens… I try to stay to myself and this dancing stuff. I can’t be a part of a gang life cause I already see where it’s going to end up.” (Jordan)His friend, Benny talked about his concern with violence in his neighborhood, “gangs like yeah they always out. I am scared like I am scared of violence cause it’s like it’s not this for me.” Kareem explained how dance was something positive he could do instead of staying in a negative environment.“I could sit down here and say it, like as a being black in New York is the most hardest thing, you know? We all go through struggles and we find this as an escape, you know, into another world – to the vibe. We downtown where a lot of energy is flowing. Where we come from in the Bronx, is so much negative things because people – the struggles change peoples’ mindset, you know?” (Kareem)While a couple dancers felt that dancing on the subway inhibited their future job prospects, the majority of dancers viewed their decision to dance on the subway as positively impacting their lives. Social Relations and ContextA Marxist dualistic theory of social relations i.e. capital vs. labor, does not directly apply to subway dancing, however complicated social relations do impact dancers’ job quality as they navigate power structures in context of New York City. Given that they do not own or rent the space in which they are performing, they are not able to set rules for who can take pictures or videos and how these can be used. In two interviews, concerns were raised that subway dancing was being used for capitalist gains but the dancers were not seeing the profits. Jordan discussed an image of a dancer being used on a T-shirt, which was sold without any compensation given to the dancer featured on the shirt. Alex discussed frustration over the concept of subway dancing being used for a commercial without hiring actual subway dancers, “Soundcloud, they have an advertisement where they have a guy doing tricks on the train on the bar. It's not a real trick, but it's a like in the advertisement, you can still use your phone on Soundcloud like underground. We actually use Soundcloud for our music underground, so you could’ve used somebody like us. I’ve been to the Soundcloud office before too so it’s like wow.” (Alex) While capitalist context of NYC influences the work of subway dancers in intricate ways, most dancers did not discuss their work as being negatively impacted by the corporations and capitalist structure. Rather the two main tensions they discussed were relations with passengers and cops. The assumption is that once you have paid to pass through the subway turn style, space on the subway platform and subway cars is to be shared.16 Once in a subway car, the passengers on the train are essentially the dancers’ customers. They have power in that they can determine whether they will “buy” the service and how much they will pay for it. Unlike entertainment in the formal market, dancers provide the service of entertainment before payment is ensured. Also unlike the formal market, customers do not get to choose whether or not to see the entertainment. Some passengers may and do choose to ignore the dancers while they are performing, i.e. keeping their head down or headphones on. Jeremiah and Jacoby, members of the same dance crew, were proud that their dancing provided an alternative to the formal entertainment market of NYC,“Why does New York have to pay to go to a Broadway show, you can just watch it while you are on your way somewhere while you are on your way to work. You never know people could be having a bad day see somebody you know.” (Jeremiah)“Put on a song that they like” (Jacoby)“Boom! They happy again” (Jeremiah)Interactions with passengers are a key determinant of job quality on a daily basis. As mentioned above, dancers try to strategically choose days when passengers will be in a better mood. Corey, a 21-year-old from the Bronx discusses this,“[C]ertain weekdays people just have they attitude like. You can’t stop it like. Sometimes I think it’s me. But then I realize like nah it’s just, it’s just Monday… so I like to dance on the weekend, make everything fun... I try to have other people smiling. At least you enjoyed the show. I know that I am doing the right thing.” (Corey)Navigating relations with passengers is something the more veteran dancers have learned with time. Alex, who has been dancing on the subway for over 10 years, explains,“But now there’s a lot of new people that just do it. People from neighborhoods just doin’ it. I know it's probably just to stay out of trouble, which I'm not mad with. I’m just upset with the way they conduct themselves on the train, very unprofessional. I’m not gonna blame them but they should know not to speak to anybody. Like if somebody else talks to them crazy, they don't know how to handle the situation right.” (Alex)As discussed above, more difficult than navigating relations with passengers is navigating relations with the police. Crisp, who has been dancing on the subway for 12 years gave us one detailed account of the first time he was arrested and his conversation with the officer beforehand,“He like, ‘Yeah, so listen. You’re not in any trouble. Yesterday, I saw you, you, and another dude dancing on the train. Ya’ll were in my cart… I left ya’ll alone because your show was great and you were polite to the people… However, yesterday, not you guys on the A train, somebody on the L train kicked some lady on the face because they didn’t want to move out the middle, so now we gotta crack down on all of ya’ll…They put the cuffs on us, they got our ID’s, put the cuffs on us, took us to the precinct. That time we didn’t go to the bookings. The next, like four or five times I got arrested, all the other times I went to the bookings, stuff like that, you know, spent the night on dirty floors, whatever, whatever.” (Crisp)Throughout the interviews, the police emerged as a common opponent of all the dancers. Having a common opponent seemed to be one of the things that bonded subway dancers as one community. The father of the 7 and 10-year-old we spoke to explained, “people do come together for unity of course it’s like if you on the train and you see the cops you gonna be like yo guys watch it the cops is down there so.” We asked all the dancers if dancing on the subway was competitive. Specific responses varied. Generally, while dancers expressed pride in their individual dance ability, a sense of community, particularly within a team, appeared to supersede competition. Ervin explains the sense of community within his team of over 44 members versus competition between teams,“When it comes to territory, yes. Yes, it sometimes does start things… so say for example if two teams got on the same train and we get to the next stop and there’s already another team sitting on the bench, someone comes down and gets in their car and starts problems. But with my team, we don't do that, it’s like okay, if you're here first you go ahead. You do your thing. We might delay, we might wait two trains just to separate the gap so there's no type of head clashing or nothing.” (Ervin)For Smalls, the 27-year-old who is homeless, his understanding of community extended beyond teams, saying “if you are a dancer, you are family.” Many of interviewees talked about community and lifting each other up. Kareem said, “If you can’t help somebody, then you’re going to always be stuck – stay underneath a rock. If you could – if everybody could help you, everybody could push that rock.” Crisp also discussed community,“Yeah it’s a lot of times like dancers have worse predicaments in life than us and worse situations and stuff so it’s even like, dancers get kicked out of the house or homeless and then I even had a dancer I know that was homeless and I had him come stay at my house.” (Crisp)While dancers are effectively self-employed, there is a strong sense of community when it comes to one’s team and particularly the other dancers you “hit with,” i.e. perform with. Even beyond the teams, there appeared to be some collective spirit that unifies subway dancers who have to navigate the context of New York City. We asked all dancers, toward the end of the interview “Do you think subway dancing benefits New York City?” All interviewees said yes.17 Crisp explained his response saying,“… there is plenty of tourists that I bumped into telling me that I have changed their lives saying that they never seen nothing like this in their lives... Like it really does benefit New York City that this is an element that will never die out as much as they want it to die it will never die out.” (Crisp)Barry also discussed the benefits to New Yorkers, saying it shows people how “just to enjoy life and calm down.” He went on to explain the benefits to kids, “it shows them something that, look, you don't have to shoot a basketball, you don’t have to be a geek or a smarty-pants, do something you love and just be happy doing it.” A universal theme across the sample of interviewees was a sense of pride in their work. The pride did not only come from their dance skills, but from the positive impact they believed subway dancing has on New York City.Discussion and ConclusionUnderstanding context, social relations and power is critical to the analysis of job quality for subway dancers of New York City. Results highlight the ability of the young men in our sample to find meaningful work despite contexts of strict constraints. However, this meaningful work comes with risks and disadvantages. The prevalence of subway dancing in NYC is evidence of the lack of quality formal employment options for low-income young men of color in the city. Within informal employment classification system, introduced in Fields (1990), subway dancing has some characteristics consistent with “easy-entry” category given the low financial barriers to entry. Typically, easy entry informal employment in developing countries is described as work pursued by the very poor as a survival strategy. While the majority of young men we spoke with would not be classified as the poorest of the poor in New York City, the language of survival may still be appropriate. For many, dancing on the subway is means to escape contexts of violence and thus is a survival strategy. Still dancers do face a skill barrier in entering this type of informal employment, so a simple “easy-entry” classification is not appropriate. Identity also appeared to influence who could and could not enter this type of work. While some dancers thought of themselves as entrepreneurs, the business framework of dancing on the subway is different from the typical “upper-tier” informal employment category applied in developing context. Thus, subway dancing does not fall neatly into the “easy-entry” vs. “upper-tier” classification of informal employment used in developing contexts.Subway dancers we spoke with were also attracted to this type of work because of the freedom it afforded them in terms of nature and pace of work. However, despite the lack of a boss, broader power structures and ownership over the space where they perform still influence their work process. Their work requires navigating complicated power dynamics with both passengers and police. The response of the NYPD to subway dancing is an example of the criminalization of black male bodies in the United States. Young men of color are choosing to use their bodies to create art and beauty yet they are punished for this choice. We acknowledge that the regulation of the subway system and the safety of passengers makes this issue more complicated. However, the fact that the response is to criminalize the behavior is evidence of a lack of creativity on the part of policy makers. Through our conversations with dancers, we talked about possibilities for raising the job quality of subway dancers while still ensuring the safety of passengers. One dancer suggested that certain carts be designated for subway dancers and to provide individuals with a choice in interacting with subway dancers. Additionally, dancers could be required to get a license to perform on the subway. Essentially this becomes a question of whether the subway dancing can be transformed into formal employment. One concern with the process of formalization is that it creates more barriers to entry. Currently dancing on the subway provides an alternative non-violent community for young men and is a source of income for those who have not found formal employment or who find the job quality of their formal employment options so low that they prefer to dance on the subway. Adding additional barriers to entry may further restrict the options of an already constrained group – low-income young men of color in New York City. As long as the current constraints persist, it is important that subway dancing remains a relatively low-barrier-to-entry form of employment. The challenge lies in preserving the benefits of this type of informal employment while decreasing the risks faced by these talented young men.Cities across the United States and in other developed countries are filled with individuals facing similar contexts of economic and social inequality. Subway dancing is an informal activity, which particularly attracts young men of color. Future work should investigate how identity related to gender, age, race and national origin affect access to income-earning opportunities within informal employment. Future research should also investigate the relationship between the degree of legality and job quality within informal employment in the developed contexts. In addition to considering the ways in which job quality can be increased within informal employment, policy work should focus on increasing quality of formal job options and decreasing barriers to quality formal jobs for marginalized populations. WORKS CITEDAlexander, Michelle. 2011. The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness, Revised Edition. New York, The New Press.Bouclin, Suzanne. 2006. "Dancers Empowering (Some) Dancers: The Intersection of Race, Class and Gender in Organizing Erotic Labourers." Race, Gender & Class, Vol. 13, No. 3/4: 98-129.Brewer, Rose M., Cecilia A. Conrad, and Mary C. King. 2002. 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U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2016 Annual Social and Economic Supplement. “Educational Attainment in the United States: 2016” Accessed 25 April 2017. , Sudhit.?2006. Off the books. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.Warren, Emma. 2013. "Litefeet: New York’s New Dance Step." RBMA Daily. NOTES[1] Vinit Mukhija and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris’s 2014 edited volume The Informal American City: From Taco Trucks to Day Labor offers a contemporary analysis of informality in the United States. Written from an urban planning perspective, the case studies in this volume reveal the important interactions of informal and formal economic activities in different US cities and the complications of regulating this type of work. [2] International Labour Organization’s decent work agenda was developed to promote “decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity” (ILO 1999). The agenda shares theoretical influences with individuals-in-relation framework as it considers social relations, workers’ ability to influence the conditions of their lives and the legal and political institutions in which work is embedded. Floro and Messier (2008) note, however, that the macro level decent work index is limited when considering informal employment because it relies on evaluating legal frameworks and formal institutions such as minimum wage laws, unionizations and formal social protections (Floro and Messier 2008, 6). [3] A full critique of the theory of compensating wage differentials is outside the scope of this paper. However, worth noting, is John Stuart Mill’s argument that the assumption of full employment in the theory of compensating wage differentials makes it irrelevant in most cases (Kaufman and Hotchkiss 1999, 414-415).[4] Nine interviews were conducted with the interviewee alone, 16 were done in pairs, and nine were conducted in groups of three.[5] The poverty rate among non-Hispanic Asians was 26.6 percent (NYC Center for Economic Opportunity, 2017).[6] The poverty rate in Manhattan was 14.6 percent in 2014 (NYC Center for Economic Opportunity, 2017).[7] One precinct in midtown Manhattan also shows a high murder rate (NYC Crime Maps, 2017). [8] For ages 20 to 24 the unemployment rate was 15.3 percent for African American males, 9.8 percent for Hispanic/Latinos and 7.9 percent for white males (BLS, 2017).[9] In Mallett’s 2015 book The School-to-prison Pipeline, he notes that certain problematic security measures and punitive tactics are more likely to be used in low-income inner city schools (Christopher Mallett 2015, 99-100). In 2014 the high school dropout rate for black youth was 7.4 percent, for Hispanics/Latinos was 10.6 percent, and for the white population was 5.2 percent (IES NCES National Center for Education Statistics, 2017).[10] We did not explicitly ask other respondents if their household received public assistance.[11] According to interviewees, the person who brings the amp gets to keep any change.[12] Two interviewees said they were able to get their amp back after being arrested and two said they were not.[13] The information we have about arrests is based solely on interviews with dancers. We did not speak with any police officers.[14] Ten interviewees said high school was useful, two said high school was partially useful, three didn't answer or we did not explicitly ask them this question. Two interviewees were still in elementary school.[15] Frankie explained, “It keeps me away from all the negativity like such like gangs you know away from violence.” [16] Not all subways dancers pay to enter the subway as some discussed jumping the turn style. The other tactic to avoid paying is to ask other passengers leaving the train if they could have a free swipe, since there are monthly subway passes with unlimited number of trips.[17] In some interviews the positive impact on New York came up in conversation without prompting.Table 1. Sample Descriptive StatisticsTable 2. Comparison to US census data (US Census, CPS, 2016)Table 3. Descriptive Statistics: Other Current EmploymentTable 4. Daily Earnings (reported as a range)Table 5. Hours and DaysTable 6. Reason started dancingFigure 1. Individuals-in-Relation Job Quality Framework(Roncolato and Willoughby, 2017)Figure 2. Crime Map of NYC (January 2015 to December 2016)(NYC Crime Maps, 2017) ................
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