“This workshop is presented by the History and Philosophy Department of the University of New Orleans in collaboration with the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society, at the University of Minho, and the Justice Studies Program at the University of New Orleans. It will be held at the University of New Orleans, February 22-23, 2024 at the Dougie Hitt Conference Room, at the Library, room 407, 2000 Lakeshore Dr, New Orleans, LA 70148.
The workshop is organized by Sara Bizarro (University of New Orleans) and Roberto Merrill (UBIECO project at the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society/University of Minho).” Read more:
The University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research has released its final report on the first county to experiment with GI during the pandemic. This report is also the first in a series entitled, “The American Guaranteed Income Studies.” The Center will be releasing will be releasing full mixed-methods findings across a range of sites in the coming months under this series.
China’s ongoing rural reforms are fostering practices akin to basic income, offering dividends to residents in the vast countryside. This development draws a parallel to the broader discussion of basic income within the context of China’s social security system and policies, such as the DiBao policy.
Since 2016, China has embarked on a reform of its rural collective property rights system. This reform, which involves a unified method of property verification by the central government, has enabled many villages across the country to establish clear ownership of assets. This foundational step has set the stage for the distribution of dividends.
The reform involves transforming collective operating assets into a shareholding cooperation system. The government mandates that villages and towns with these assets quantify them into shares for collective members, allowing for the distribution of earnings based on these shares. This approach leverages China’s collective economic base and equitably allocates previously undefined collective property to each member. Consequently, villagers now own shares and receive dividends, significantly enhancing their sense of financial gain.
However, these dividends differ from the traditional concept of basic income. They are conditional, require ownership in the collective, and do not necessarily follow a regular payment schedule. Despite these differences, the reforms have led to innovative institutional experiments across various pilot projects.
For instance, to include permanent residents and workers without shares in dividend distribution, some collectives have introduced new types of shares such as labor, land, and capital shares. This diversification enables broader participation, aligning more closely with the unconditional principle of basic income.
In terms of periodic distribution, some village groups, like Yongjiang Street in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, have moved from lump-sum to regular payments. This approach, now increasingly adopted by local cooperatives, ensures more consistent financial support for members.
The impact of these reforms is tangible. In Beijing’s Haidian district, for example, villagers like Zhong Ercui have transitioned from traditional employment to becoming shareholders and employees of village collectives, receiving substantial dividends. This shift has significantly improved the economic conditions of thousands of residents in the region.
These reforms represent a significant step in China’s rural development, blending traditional collective economic practices with modern principles of equitable asset distribution and financial empowerment for rural residents.
The UBI Piloters Network brings together researchers, policymakers, activists, and civil society actors interested or engaged in trialling Unconditional Basic Income (UBI). The space is convened by the University of Bath, the University of Freiburg’s Institute for Basic Income Studies, and the Basic Income Earth Network. We aim to create connection across the UBI piloting field, to build new collaborations, share key learnings, and establish best practice. Sign up to our newsletter here and read on to learn more.
Research, policy, and activist interest in UBI has exploded in recent years, and this has led to a huge rise in the number of global UBI pilots. Yet for all this amazing growth, until now, no global platform has existed for sharing UBI pilot findings, creating community across the piloting field, or supporting researchers to engage effectively with policymaker audiences. The UBI Piloters Network aims to remedy these issues by building and curating the world’s first global network of UBI piloters, taking inspiration from the work of the Basic Income Earth Network and US UBI Community of Practice.
Launched in Summer 2023, The UBI Piloters Network curates a monthly newsletter that brings together updates from across the piloting community, featuring updates on recent research, policy developments, potential gatherings, publications, and opportunities for collaboration.
The Network also hosts an online seminar series for piloters to share recent findings and discuss emerging developments. It will host a hybrid Winter School on ‘How To Build A Pilot’, and convene the world’s first ever conference of UBI piloters – hosted in Germany in Summer 2024.
If you have ideas for how to expand this work and make it more relevant to you and the UBI piloting community, please do get in touch! We want this to work for the community it aims to serve.
Please also share the Network with piloters far and wide!
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Our Partners
The UBI Piloters Network is a collaboration between the University of Bath (in particular the UBI piloting WorkFREE research team), the Freiburg Institute of Basic Income Studies (FRIBIS – especially the UBI Experiments Team), and the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). Seed funding has come from Bath, FRIBIS, and the European Research Council.
The University of Bath is a leading centre of UBI research in the UK and is in the process of building a UK UBI Beacon to nurture the next generation of UBI scholars, activists, and engaged policymakers. At Bath, WorkFREE brings together scholars, activists and civil society institutions from India and the UK to pilot ‘UBI+’ in four informal settlements in inner-city Hyderabad, India. UBI+ combines universal basic income (UBI) and needs-focused, participatory community organising in order to support people to increase their power to meet their needs. The two-year pilot seeks to answer a wide range of questions, including ‘What impact does UBI+ have on people’s freedom from exploitation?’ and ‘Can UBI+ support the green transition?’.
FRIBIS is an interdisciplinary network at the University of Freiburg dedicated to research on Universal Basic Income. By bringing together researchers and civil society actors from all over the world, we aim to provide a sound, well-researched foundation for the public and political discourse on Basic Income. In this way, it wants to contribute to transformation towards a more just and sustainable society.
BIEN is a global network of UBI activists and researchers. Drawing on its unique Basic Income expertise built over decades of work, BIEN strives to be a globally trusted, go-to source of information and analysis around Basic Income. BIEN builds connective tissue between people and institutions working on Basic Income, be these activists, campaigners, researchers, governments or civil society organisations. And BIEN aims to catalyse local and global debate and work to push the boundaries of what is possible, all in the direction of a more just, caring society.
The ERC is a major Europe Union research funding agency at the heart of research and innovation across the continent.
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If you have UBI Piloting New to share, other relevant material to go out in the Newsletter, ideas you want to run buy us, or plans to pitch, please get in touch with us here: piloters@basicincome.org
