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Abstract
This article develops a Gramscian approach to the governance of ‘informal’ economies through a historical study of International Labour Organization (ILO) programmes in East Africa. Drawing on Gramsci’s conception of the ‘subaltern’, the article highlights the ways in which the articulation of ‘informality’ in policy documents is coloured by broader struggles over the political organisation of labour. The article develops this argument through two case studies. The first examines the World Employment Programme mission to Kenya in the 1970s that popularised the concept of ‘informal’ labour. The second is a contemporary programme on apprenticeships in the informal economy that originated in Tanzania.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Stephen McBride and the anonymous reviewers at this journal for their comments on earlier versions of this article. Thanks are also due to staff at the ILO Archives for their assistance.
Notes
1. ILO, Decent Work and the Informal Sector; Transitioning From the Informal to the Formal; Blurch, Canagarajah, and Raju, “Informal Sector Revisited.”
2. Standing, Precariat; Munck, “Precariat”; Webster and Bischoff, “New Actors in Employment Relations”; Gallin, “Propositions on Trade Unions”; Rizzo, “End of Trade Unionism.”
3. Roitman, “Politics of Informal Markets”; Rizzo, “Life is War”; Phillips, “Informality, Global Production Networks”; Meagher, “Social Capital or Analytical Liability?”; Taylor, “Conscripts of Competitiveness.”
4. Mead and Morrisson, “Informal Sector Elephant”.
5. Roitman, “Politics of Informal Markets,” 679.
6. See ILO, Decent Work and the Informal Economy; and Transitioning from the Informal to the Formal.
7. ILO, Decent Work and the Informal Economy, 34.
8. ILO, Transitioning from the Informal to the Formal, 7.
9. Ibid., 10.
10. Selwyn, Global Development Crisis; “Elite Development Theory.”
11. de Soto, Mystery of Capital.
12. Maloney, ‘Informality Revisted’.
13. Rizzo, “Life is War”; “End of Trade Unionism.”
14. Meagher, “Social Capital or Analytical Liability?”
15. Phillips, “Informality, Global Production Networks”; on the concept of ‘adverse inclusion’ more broadly see Wood, “Faustian Bargain”; du Toit, “‘Social Exclusion’ Discourse.”
16. Taylor, “Conscripts of Competitiveness.”
17. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 52.
18. Ibid., 52.
19. Ibid., 52.
20. Ibid., 181.
21. Campling et al., “Class Dynamics of Development.”
22. eg Ferguson, Anti-Politics Machine; Escobar, Encountering Development. This literature has of course been much debated, including in this journal: see Andrews and Bawa, “Post-Development Hoax?”; Schaffer, “Post-Development and Poverty.”
23. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 465.
24. Morse, “World Employment Programme”; Saith, “Interview with Louis Emmerij,” 1168.
25. “Basic Ideas for the High-Level Kenyan Mission,” annex to Jorge Mendez minute to Dr. Ammar, 26 April 1971, ILO Archives, Geneva (ILOA), WEP 159–3-227–1.
26. Amsden, International Firms and Labour in Kenya, 118.
27. See Cooper, On the African Waterfront.
28. Republic of Kenya, Select Committee, 3.
29. Ibid., 8.
30. Mboya, Income Policies for Developing Countries, 5. Emphasis added.
31. A footnote in the ILO report credits the Kenyan academics who had participated in the mission with advancing the concept (ILO, Employment, Incomes, and Equality, 6, note 1), and it had been used by Keith Hart in a paper presented to the Institute for Development Studies at Sussex (where the leaders of the ILO mission worked) in 1971; see Hart, “Informal Income and Urban Employment.” Who deserves credit for the term ‘informal’ is less interesting here, however, than the circumstances under which the Kenyan mission report used it.
32. ILO, Employment, Incomes, and Equality, 7. Emphasis added.
33. Leys, “Interpreting African Underdevelopment,” 426.
34. ILO, Employment, Incomes, and Equality, 259.
35. “Summary of the main points raised by the African delegates attending the International Labour Conference, at the meeting convened by the General Secretariat of the Organisation for African Unity on ILO strategy concerning the Jobs and Skills Programme for Africa,” 2 July 1970, ILOA WEP 159–3.
36. Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Kenya), “Initial Comments on: Employment, Incomes and Equality in Kenya: A Report of UN-ILO Team of Experts (Geneva 1972),” ILOA WEP 159–3-227–1 (2).
37. Republic of Kenya, Sessional Paper No. 10.
38. Godfrey, “Prospects for a Basic Needs Strategy,” 41.
39. Sandbrook, Politics of Basic Needs.
40. Asp, “Social Classes,” 2.
41. Ibid., 5.
42. J. I. Othieno to F. Blanchard, 16 March 1976, ILOA WEP 159–3-227–3-1 (3).
43. A. Béguin minute to Mr. Emmerij and Mrs. Mosimann, 5 April 1976, ILOA WEP 159–3-227–3-1 (3).
44. Bangasser, “ILO and the Informal Sector.”
45. World Bank, Vocational and Technical Education.
46. ILO, Apprenticeship in the Informal Economy in Africa.
47. see Illife, “Creation of Group Consciousness.”
48. Rizzo, “Life is War.”
49. See, for instance, the debate between Fischer, “Revisiting Abandoned Ground”; and Rizzo, “Trade Unionism.”
50. Rizzo, “Life is War,” 1187–8.
51. Tanzania Revenue Agency, Review of Informal Sector, 2.
52. Author interview with ILO official, Geneva, 10 July 2014.
53. Nübler, Hoffman, and Grenier, “Understanding Informal Apprenticeship.”
54. See Taylor, “Conscripts of Competitiveness.”
55. Nübler, Hoffman, and Grenier, “Understanding Informal Apprenticeship,” ix.
56. Ibid., 31.
57. Ibid., 33–4.
58. ILO, Upgrading Informal Apprenticeship.
59. Ibid., 1.
60. ILO, Mission Report.
61. Aggarwal, Recognition of Prior Learning.
62. Author interview, ILO official, Pretoria, 8 October 2014.
63. Alvar Mwakyusa, “VETA to Train 5,000 Artisans in Special Programme,” Tanzania Daily News, 16 January 2016, http://dailynews.co.tz/index.php/home-news/46,062-veta-to-train-5-000-artisans-in-special-programme.
64. This emphasis on improving institutions at the expense of considering dynamics of exploitation and domination is common to much of the ILO’s programming, as several critics of the ‘Decent Work Agenda’ have noted; see Selwyn, “Social Upgrading”; Lerche, “Decent Work?”