Paper short abstract:

This paper explores two different patterns of relationship between people with informal livelihoods and government through the prism of self-reliant citizenship using the cases of urban Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Paper long abstract:

The paper argues that colonial labour organisation patterns, governments’ approaches to the crises, and perceptions of informality shape people’s relationship with and expectations of the government and their vision of themselves as economic and political subjects in the informal sector. Both Zambia and Zimbabwe were labour reserve economies during the colonial period in which the informal economy was rather small and dominated by women who supplemented their husbands’ wages through informal income-generating activities. In the postcolonial period, the informal economy expanded as a consequence of economic and financial crises and unemployment. The informal economy became a space for both survival and entrepreneurship. It is, however, a sector in which problems, such as precarity, lack of social protection, financial insecurity, lack of access to finance, and challenges of labour organising are the most acute. People with livelihoods in the urban informal economy largely had to become self-reliant citizens who adapted to and navigated the changing circumstances. The two countries had different approaches to economic informality as a socioeconomic phenomenon, different policies towards the informal economy, and somewhat different organisational practices in the informal sector. As a result, despite some similarities, people’s self-reliance and expectations of the state took different forms in Zambia and Zimbabwe, expressing people’s visions of themselves as economic actors.

The paper is based on the rich interview data collected in Harare in 2016-2018 and Lusaka and Kitwe in 2023-2024.