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Similar to Western countries, the early origins of special education in India started with Christian missionaries and nongovernmental agencies which stressed a charity model of serving populations such as the visually, hearing, and cognitively impaired. However after its independence from Great Britain in 1947, the Indian government became more involved in providing educational, rehabilitation, and social services. Thus over the past four decades, India has moved gradually toward an inclusive education model. This chapter discusses the implementation of such a model related to the prevalence and incidence rates of disability in India as well as working within family environments that often involve three to four generations. Also included are challenges that an inclusive education system faces in India, namely, a high level of poverty, appropriate teacher preparation of special education teachers, a lack of binding national laws concerned with inclusive education, a dual governmental administration for special education services, and citizen’s and special education professionals strong concern about whether inclusive education practices can be carried out.

Purpose – This chapter illustrates how an economic sociology of work exposes the deeply embedded nature of the informal economy and the social and political lives of its growing mass of unprotected workers under globalization. In particular, the premises of economic sociology offer a comprehensive definition of the informal economy that I term, “relational.” In contrast to definitions based on modernization and neoliberal assumptions of isolated economies, relational definitions of the informal economy expose the structures, networks, and political institutions that intertwine informal workers with the formal economy, society, and the state. Operationalizing the relational definition in labor surveys ensures the inclusion of previously invisible informal workers, especially those who operate at the intersection of the informal and formal economy. As well, it ensures the collection of data on the precise ways in which informal workers are socially and politically embedded, including their collective action efforts, the meaning they attach to their labor, and the social networks that determine their life chances.

Methodology – To illustrate this point, I apply a relational definition of informal labor to the case of India, using the National Sample Survey on Employment and Unemployment, as well as findings from interviews with organized informal workers.

Findings – By doing so, I provide an internationally comparative measure of India's informal workforce, illustrate informal workers’ social conditions relative to those of formal workers, highlight the expansion of the informal workforce since the government enacted liberalization reforms, and expose the unique political action strategies Indian informal workers are launching against the state.

Implications/Originality – These findings help us understand Indian informal workers in an internationally comparative context, yielding empirical insights on their social conditions and political organizations for the first time. As well, they call for an important refinement to existing definitions of the informal economy that to date have relied only on Latin American and African experiences.

Until the early 1970s the infamous ‘White Australia Policy’ restricted certain types of migrants from entering Australia, particularly those of Asian background, with the goal of creating an ‘Anglo-Celtic’ Australian nation. Post-war mass migration, mostly from Europe, had a significant impact on the ethnic composition of the population. Despite attempts to enforce a mostly ‘British’ migration, the resulting programme would see migrants come from many non-British source countries. This ultimately pressured the government into recognition of cultural diversity and eventually in the early 1970s through the proposition of a multicultural approach. In 1973 multiculturalism was officially introduced slowly becoming a defining national asset. From 1933 to 2001, Italians were the second largest migrant group contributing to Australia’s cultural ‘make-up’, right after the ‘Anglo-Celtic’ segment of the overseas-born population (UK, New Zealand and Ireland). However, the Italian migration of the 1950s and 1960s is a closed chapter of Australian migration history, and Australia now embraces migration from countries where it was initially rejected in the pre-1970s period – Asians, particularly those from China and India. While looking at the specific cases of Italian and Chinese settlement in Australia, this chapter also provides an historical overview of Australian migration policies. We argue that the gradual inclusion of non-British migrants in Australia has been guided since 1901 Federation by a form of ‘economic opportunism’ rather than a real intention to change the ethnic make-up of the population and identity of the nation. Despite forming and maintaining strategic partnerships with Asian countries, migration to Australia is still dominated by the need to preserve a distinctive ‘Anglo-Celtic’ character.