“Making plans through people”: the social embeddedness of informal entrepreneurship in urban South Africa

ABSTRACT

Informal entrepreneurship is increasingly presented as the solution to youth unemployment in South Africa. This reflects a new development paradigm that views the informal economy as a space of entrepreneurship and economic inclusion. Despite the growing recognition of the informal economy to youth’s livelihoods in South Africa, little attention has been paid to the everyday actions, practices and motivations of informal entrepreneurs. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in an informal settlement in Johannesburg, this article focuses on an informal car wash venture to show the diversity and multiplicity of young people’s livelihood practices and the social relations that structure them and give them meaning. It highlights the double-edged nature of the social embeddedness of informal livelihoods, showing how these social relationships involve both support and reciprocity and inequality and intimidation. Ultimately, the article challenges the optimism that surrounds informal entrepreneurship as a pathway to social inclusion while also illuminating the social and economic rationalities that make self-employment preferable to low-end jobs.

KEYWORDS:

• Informal economy
• entrepreneurship
• youth
• social embeddedness
• South Africa

Acknowledgments

For invaluable comments and suggestions, the author wishes to thank Liz Fouksman, William Monteith, the participants of the ‘Youth and the Future of Work’ workshop organised by Adam Cooper and Bernard Dubbeld, and two anonymous reviewers. The research was part of a broader study on how unemployment is shaping economic, social and political life in contemporary South Africa funded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission and the National Research Foundation of South Africa (grant number: 116768), which I gratefully acknowledge. Some of the material from this article appears in a chapter entitled “‘Be your own boss’: entrepreneurial dreams on the urban margins of South Africa,” in Beyond the Wage: Ordinary work in Diverse Economies, Bristol University Press (2021). A special thanks to all my informants who allowed me into their lives, tolerated my endless questions and taught me so much.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hannah J. Dawson

Hannah J. Dawson is a Senior Researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her research interests focus on youth marginality and unemployment, the future of work and more expansive forms of social protection, with a special focus on South Africa. She recently published an article entitled “Labour, laziness and distribution: work imaginaries among the South African unemployed” (co-authored with E. Fouksman) in Africa (2020) and is currently working on a manuscript provisionally entitled “Beyond the job: emerging forms of work and life in urban South Africa.”