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Accepted Paper:
Industrial Promises, Employment Precarity, and Disrupted Production in the Shadow of Global Pandemics
Robel Mulat
(University of Gondar)
Ding Fei
(Cornell University)
Drawing upon Ethiopia’s Hawassa Industrial Park (HIP), the paper explores the contradictory encounter between state vision and representation of HIP as industrial promises on the one hand, and employment precarity and production disruption being exacerbated during global pandemic on the other.
Paper long abstract:
A central argument for industrial park-driven economic transformation in Africa is the potential to drive export earnings, facilitate technology transfer, absorb large labor force, and build industrial skills. In this paper, we revisit this conception in the context of global pandemic and the associated disruptions in production, decline in employment, and increase in labor turnover. Drawing upon ethnographic research in Ethiopia’s Hawassa Industrial Park, we explore ways that the Ethiopian government continues to convince workers to sell their labor at a very low price in order to retain foreign investors and stabilize national economy. We problematize such state vision and representation of HIP as industrial promises by tracing the shifts in employment patterns and the corporeal experiences of workers. Our analysis approaches workers’ encounters with industrial parks as a new form of precarious livelihoods, an emerging regime of struggle, and a continuous search for alternative narratives about future African development. Such an employment- and labor-centric analysis, we argue, allows for more critical understanding of industrial transformation and human wellbeing in Africa.
Key words: Development, Industrialization, Industrial park, labor, wage and Media