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Accepted Paper:
Who builds African cities? In search of job security and well-being in African workplaces
Roseline Wanjiru
(Northumbria University)
Paper short abstract:
We report on African workers and the exigencies shaping precarity and managerial control. Embedded in exhausting, exploitative conditions, they deal with tensions through compliance alongside overt and subtle resistance.Results expose interplays between workers' identities and negotiating wellbeing.
Paper long abstract:
Who builds African cities? In search of security and well-being in African workplaces.
This study explores the agency of workers labouring in African cities and their responses to economic and social precarity. We report on insights from fieldwork conducted in four African cities (Abuja, Jos, Nairobi, Mavoko). The rapid infrastructural and industrial growth underway in these African sites is supported by workers (male and female, migrant and locals) engaged in constructing and transforming African urban geographies. Their experiences and responses to rapid change and insecure livelihoods remain a very understudied area.
Through fieldwork at multiple sites, we report on the exigencies that shape African workers' livelihoods and responses to precarity and managerial control. The results highlight long hours, exhausting work tasks, low pay and insecure work conditions, alongside challenges in balancing their roles as parents and caregivers. Embedded in exhausting and exploitative conditions, the workers contend with these tensions through a range of compliant and resistant responses. The study presents insights into the interplay between workers' identities as family providers and as employees negotiating with workplace managers.
Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality, and to see the links to virtual rooms. Log in
Accepted Paper:
Roseline Wanjiru (Northumbria University)
Paper short abstract:
Paper long abstract:
Who builds African cities? In search of security and well-being in African workplaces.
This study explores the agency of workers labouring in African cities and their responses to economic and social precarity. We report on insights from fieldwork conducted in four African cities (Abuja, Jos, Nairobi, Mavoko). The rapid infrastructural and industrial growth underway in these African sites is supported by workers (male and female, migrant and locals) engaged in constructing and transforming African urban geographies. Their experiences and responses to rapid change and insecure livelihoods remain a very understudied area.
Through fieldwork at multiple sites, we report on the exigencies that shape African workers' livelihoods and responses to precarity and managerial control. The results highlight long hours, exhausting work tasks, low pay and insecure work conditions, alongside challenges in balancing their roles as parents and caregivers. Embedded in exhausting and exploitative conditions, the workers contend with these tensions through a range of compliant and resistant responses. The study presents insights into the interplay between workers' identities as family providers and as employees negotiating with workplace managers.
Authors: Roseline Wanjiru and Moses Dang.
Industrial strategies and work between Africa and China
Session 1 Friday 8 July, 2022, -