Paper short abstract:

What is considered labour, and who is considered to be a worker, has changed considerably over the last century in Zambia, resulting in large gaps in our understanding. This papers surveys these gaps and suggests ways they might be overcome.

Paper long abstract:

Zambia's workers are among the most closely studied in Africa, or some are at least. Existing studies have predominately focused on male mineworkers and this has left large gaps in our understanding about the country's recent economic history. This paper identifies how these gaps might conceivably be covered by examining efforts to identify and categorise the country's workforce from the haphazard surveys carried out by the British South Africa Company to present-day censuses and labour force surveys. Assumptions about what constituted labour, and who could therefore legitimately be considered a 'worker', have underpinned all these efforts and although the scope of categorisation has progressively widened over the last century, serious problems remain with who is understood to comprise the workforce. Changes in how the workforce has been classified also makes identifying changes in labour over time challenging. Nevertheless, this paper optimistically argues that it is possible to use previously under-utilised documentary sources and oral history to create a better and more accurate understanding of labour in Zambia and how this changed over the twentieth century.