386
Views
4
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

Understanding West Africa’s informal workers as working class

Comprendre les travailleurs informels d’Afrique de l’Ouest en tant que classe ouvrière

ORCID Icon

References

  • Ahmed, Q. K. 2007. Socio-economic and Indebtedness-related Impact of Micro-credit in Bangladesh. Dhaka, Bangladesh: University Press.
  • Alfers, L., F. Lund, and R. Moussié. 2018. “Informal Workers and the Future of Work: A Defence of Work-related Social Protection.” https://www.wiego.org/sites/default/files/publications/files/Alfers_Informal_Workers_Social_Protection_WIEGO_WP37.pdf.
  • Amin, S. 2010. The Law of Worldwide Value. New York: NYU Press.
  • Bartlett, D. 2013. “Africa: The Last Frontier of the World Economy.” RSM International. Accessed March 29, 2021. https://rsm.global/insights/economic-insights/africa-last-frontier-world-economy.
  • Bernards, N. 2018. The Global Governance of Precarity: Primitive Accumulation and the Politics of Irregular Work. London: Routledge.
  • Bernards, N. 2019. “Placing Africa Labour in Global Capitalism: The Politics of Irregular Work.” Review of African Political Economy 46 (106): 294–303.
  • Bernstein, H. 1977. “Notes on Capital and Peasantry.” Review of African Political Economy 4 (10): 60–73.
  • Bernstein, H. 2010. Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press.
  • Best, J. 2013. “Redefining Poverty as Risk and Vulnerability: Shifting Strategies of Liberal Economic Governance.” Third World Quarterly 34 (1): 109–129. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2013.755356.
  • Bhattacharya, T. 2017. “Mapping Social Reproduction Theory.” In Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, edited by T. Bhattacharya, 1–20. London: Pluto Press.
  • Burawoy, M. 2000. “Reaching for the Global.” In Global Ethnography, edited by M. Burawoy, J. A. Blum, S. George, Z. Gille, and M. Thayer, 1–41. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
  • Carré, F., and M. Chen. 2020. The Informal Economy Revisited: Examining the Past, Envisioning the Future. New York: Taylor and Francis.
  • Carroll, T. 2010. Delusions of Development: The World Bank and the Post-Washington Consensus in Southeast Asia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Chen, M. 2007. “Rethinking the Informal Economy: Linkages with the Formal Economy and the Formal Regulatory Environment.” DESA Working Paper no. 46. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
  • Chen, M., R. Jhabvala, and F. Lund. 2002. Supporting Workers in the Informal Economy: A Policy Framework. Geneva: International Labour Office.
  • Chitonge, H. 2018. “Capitalism in Africa: Mutating Capitalist Relations and Social Formations.” Review of African Political Economy 45 (155): 158–167.
  • Chowdhury, R., and H. Willmott. 2019. “Microcredit, the Corporatization of Nongovernmental Organizations, and Academic Activism: The Example of Professor Anu Muhammad.” Organization 26 (1): 122–140.
  • Cleaver, H. 2019. Reading Capital Politically. 2nd ed. New York: Pluto Press.
  • Copans, J. 2020. “Have the Social Classes of Yesterday Vanished from Africanist Issues or are African Societies Made up of New Classes? A French Anthropologist’s Perspective.” Review of African Political Economy 47 (163): 10–26.
  • Cox, K. R., and R. Negi. 2010. “The State and the Question of Development in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Review of African Political Economy 37 (123): 71–85.
  • Curtis, M., and T. Jones. 2017. Honest Accounts 2017: How the World Profits from Africa’s Wealth. London: Global Justice Now.
  • De Soto, H. 1989. The Other Path. London: Harper and Row.
  • De Soto, H. 2001. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. London: Black Swan.
  • Denzer, L. 1982. “Wallace-Johnson and the Sierra Leone Labor Crisis of 1939.” African Studies Review 25 (2/3): 159–183.
  • Dolan, C., and D. Rajak. 2018. “Remaking Africa’s Informal Economies: Youth, Entrepreneurship and the Promise of Inclusion at the Bottom of the Pyramid.” In Globalization, Economic Inclusion, and African Workers, edited by K. Meagher, L. Mann, and M. Bolt, 44–59. New York: Routledge.
  • Federici, S. 2020. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. New York: PM Press.
  • Gallas, A. 2018. “Class Power and Union Capacities: A Research Note on the Power Resources Approach.” Global Labour Journal 9 (3): 348–352.
  • Gandy, M. 2005. “Learning from Lagos.” New Left Review 33 (37): 8–9.
  • GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), UN Global Compact and WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development). 2015. “SDG 8: Promote Sustained, Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Growth, Full and Productive Employment and Decent Work for All.” SDG Compass. https://sdgcompass.org/sdgs/sdg-8/.
  • ILO (International Labour Organization). 2018. Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture. 3rd ed. Geneva: International Labour Office.
  • ILO. 2019. Organizing Informal Economy Workers into Trade Unions. Geneva: International Labour Office, Bureau for Workers’ Activities.
  • International Trade Commission. 2020. “Sierra Leone Country Commercial Guide: Mining and Mineral Resource.” Department of Commerce, USA. https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/sierra-leone-mining-and-mineral-resources.
  • John, T. 2018. “How the US and Rwanda Have Fallen Out Over Second-hand Clothes.” BBC News.
  • Jones, J. 2020. “The Failed Economics of Care Work.” The American Prospect. https://prospect.org/familycare/the-failed-economics-of-care-work/.
  • Kabeer, N., R. Sudarshan, and K. Milward, eds. 2013. Organizing Women Workers in the Informal Economy: Beyond the Weapons of the Weak. New York: Zed Books.
  • Kamara, F. S. 2018. Economic and Social Crises in Sierra Leone: The Role of Small-scale Entrepreneurs in Petty Trading as Strategy for Survival 1960–1997. Bloomington, IN: Author House.
  • Kardas-Nelson, M. 2019. “Microfinance Lenders in Sierra Leone Accused of ‘Payday Loan’ Interest Rates.” The Guardian, December 12. Accessed July 14, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/12/microfinance-lenders-in-sierra-leone-accused-of-payday-loan-interest-rates.
  • Kurtz, M. J. 2004. “The Dilemmas of Democracy in the Open Economy: Lessons from Latin America.” World Politics 56: 262–302.
  • La Porta, R., and A. Shleifer. 2014. “Informality and Development.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (3): 109–126.
  • Mader, P. 2015. The Political Economy of Microfinance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Mair, J., I. Marti, and M. Ventresca. 2012. “Building Inclusive Markets in Rural Bangladesh: How Intermediaries Work Institutional Voids.” Academy of Management Journal 55 (4): 819–850.
  • Mannan, M. 2009. “BRAC: Anatomy of a ‘Poverty Enterprise’.” Nonprofit Management and Leadership 20 (2): 219–233.
  • McDermott, J. L. 2020. “The Political Economy of Informal Workers: Giving Africa’s Workers Their Due.” [Manuscript submitted for publication]. Pittsburgh: Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh.
  • Meagher, K. 2013. “Unlocking the Informal Economy: A Literature Review on Linkages Between Formal and Informal Economies in Developing Countries.” WEIGO Working Paper no. 27. Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing.
  • Meyskens, A., and N. Auch. 2014. “Value Creation at the Individual, Venture and Societal Levels of Analyses Through Social Venture Competitions.” In Theory and Empirical Research in Social Entrepreneurship, edited by P. Phan, J. Kickul, S. Bacq, and M. Nordqvist, 256–291. Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Mignolo, Walter D. 2007. “Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-coloniality.” Cultural Studies 21 (2–3): 449–514.
  • Moody, K. 1988. An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism. New York: Verso.
  • Muhammad, A. 2015. “Bangladesh – A Model of Neoliberalism.” Monthly Review. https://monthlyreview-org.pitt.idm.oclc.org/2015/03/01/bangladesh-a-model-of-neoliberalism/.
  • Neal, D. 2011. “Business Unionism vs Revolutionary Unionism.” Industrial Workers of the World. Accessed April 3, 2021. https://archive.iww.org/history/documents/misc/DaveNeal/.
  • Ochonu, M. E. 2020. “African Entrepreneurship: The Fetish of Personal Responsibility.” Roape.net, May 26, Capitalism in Africa blog. Accessed May 25. http://roape.net/2020/05/26/african-entrepreneurship-the-fetish-of-personal-responsibility/.
  • Ouma, S. 2017. “The Difference that ‘Capitalism’ Makes: On the Merits and Limits of Critical Political Economy in African Studies.” Review of African Political Economy 44 (153): 499–509.
  • Oya, C. 2013. “The Land Rush and Classic Agrarian Questions of Capital and Labour: A Systematic Scoping Review of the Socioeconomic Impact of Land Grabs in Africa.” Third World Quarterly 34 (9): 1532–1557.
  • Peet, R., and E. Hartwick. 2015. Theories of Development. 3rd ed. New York: Gulliford Press.
  • Prahalad, C. K. 2005. The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing.
  • Rizzo, M. 2018. Taken for a Ride. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Round, J. I. 2007. “Globalization, Growth, Inequality and Poverty in Africa: A Macroeconomic Perspective.” UNU-WIDER Research Paper no. 55. https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/rp2007-55.pdf.
  • Roy, A. 2011. “Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35 (2): 222–238.
  • Schmalz, Stefan, Carmen Ludwig, and Edward Webster. 2018. “Debate: Power Resources and Global Capitalism.” Global Labour Journal 9 (2): 84–90.
  • Scott, J. C. 2010. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New York: NUS Press.
  • Scott, J. C. 2013. Decoding Subaltern Politics. New York: Routledge.
  • Shivji, I. G. 1975. “Peasants and Class Alliances.” Review of African Political Economy 2: 10–18.
  • Smith, A. 2016. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Simon and Brown.
  • Spivak, G. C. 2005. “Scattered Speculations on the Subaltern and the Popular.” Postcolonial Studies 8 (4): 475–486.
  • Standing, G. 2016. The Precariat. New York: Bloomsbury.
  • Standing, G. 2017. The Corruption of Capitalism. London: Biteback Publishing.
  • Suwandi, I. 2019. Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
  • Traub-Merz, R., and H. Jauch. 2006. “The African Textile and Clothing Industry: From Import Substitution to Export Orientation.” In The Future of the Textile and Clothing Industry in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by R. Traub-Merz and H. Jauch, 9–35. Bonn, Germany: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
  • Tronti, M. 2019. Workers and Capital. Translated by D. Broder. New York: Verso Books.
  • UN (United Nations). 2021. “The SDG Report 2020.” UN Stats Open SDGs Data Hub. Accessed January 3, 2021. https://undesa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=49119ad4fb9845469f7270acc5380a19.
  • van Stel, A., M. Carree, and R. Thurik. 2005. “The Effect of Entrepreneurial Activity on National Economic Growth.” Small Business Economics 24: 311–321.
  • Wallerstein, I. 1979. The Capitalist World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Werbner, P. 2018. “Rethinking Class and Culture in Africa: Between E. P. Thompson and Pierre Bourdieu.” Review of African Political Economy 45 (155): 7–24.
  • WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing). 2021a. “WIEGO Manifesto.” Accessed July 18, 2021. https://www.wiego.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/WIEGO%20MANIFESTO.pdf.
  • WIEGO. 2021b. “ILO-WIEGO Statistical Reports.” Accessed July 19, 2021. https://www.wiego.org/ilo-wiego-statistical-reports.
  • Williams, C. 2017. “Tackling Employment in the Informal Economy: A Critical Evaluation of the Neoliberal Policy Approach.” Economic and Industrial Democracy 38 (1): 145–169.
  • World Bank. 1995. World Development Report. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • World Bank. 2014. World Development Report. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.