Microenterprise development, industrial labour, and the seductions of precarity

Microenterprise development is underpinned by an ideology that the solution to poverty is the integration of the poor into market relations. This article addresses the paradox that its ‘beneficiaries’ may be dispossessed industrial workers who already have a long history of participation in the capitalist economy. Exploring the transformation of garment workers in Trinidad from factory employees to home-based ‘micro-entrepreneurs’, I argue that working conditions and labour rights have deteriorated under the protective cover of seemingly laudable policies to promote economic empowerment via self-employment. Showing how microenterprise initiatives contribute to women workers’ ‘adverse incorporation’ (Phillips, 2011) into global production networks, this article calls for renewed attention to the labour politics of microenterprise development

Epitaxial growth and patterning of sputtered Fe films on GaAs(001)

Fe(001) films, 10�100 nm thick, were epitaxially grown by magnetron sputtering on GaAs(001) and on 100-nm-thick Au(001) buffer layers in an UHV-based sputtering system. Excellent epitaxy is inferred from X-ray diffraction measurements and the magnetic anisotropy of the films. From X-ray ö-scans, the epitaxial relationships Fe[100]GaAs[100] and Fe[100]Au[110] were determined. Magnetic measurements by vibrating sample (VSM) and alternating gradient magnetometry (AGM) show a distinct fourfold in-plane anisotropy with the anisotropy constant of bulk Fe. Large- area patterning of the films was done by holographic lithography and ion beam etching. Square arrays of dots with periods of 300 nm to 1 ìm, dot widths of 50 to 490 nm and different heights were made. Magnetization measurements (VSM, AGM) show a clear change in the magnetic properties of the films dominated by the shape anisotropy of the dots. Again, for some of the samples a fourfold in-plane anisotropy can be observed