Employment Relationships and Organizing Strategies in the Informal Construction Sector

by Jill Wells and Arthur Jason Abstract The expansion of self-employment, casual labor and outsourcing in the construction sector around the world and the growing involvement of intermediaries has led to an increasing complexity of employment relationships. The paper discusses the implications of this complexity for collective organizing, drawing on recent studies of informal labor in the […]

Informalization from Above, Informalization from Below: The Options for Organization

by Jan Theron Abstract The paper examines different strategies for the collective organization of informal workers, on the basis of a number of empirical illustrations from South Africa. It argues that the situation of workers in the informal economy is best understood in terms of two inter-related processes. The first is “informalization from above,” whereby […]

Informality and Casualization as Challenges to South Africa’s Industrial Unionism: Manufacturing Workers in the East Rand/Ekurhuleni Region in the 1990s

by Franco Barchiesi Abstract The paper addresses informalization processes driven by layoffs, casualization, and outsourcing and their implications for workers’ agency. The empirical focus is on the metal engineering, glass, and paper industries in the East Rand, South Africa’s industrial heartland. The author argues that growing job precariousness, the expansion of casual work, the increasing stratification […]

Between Exit and Voice: Informality and the Spaces of Popular Agency – Introduction

by Ilda Lindell, Guest Editor Abstract The last decades have witnessed deepening processes of informalization and casualization in Africa and beyond. Growing numbers of people rely on economic activities occurring beyond state regulation, something that is widely evident in urban areas. Multiple dynamics are converging to drive these trends that have resulted in new floods […]

African Studies Quarterly

Tag: Informalization