The global governance of informal economies: the International Labour Organization in East Africa

Nick Bernards

Third World Quarterly, 2017, vol. 38, issue 8, 1831-1846

Abstract: This article develops a Gramscian approach to the governance of ‘informal’ economies through a historical study of International Labour Organization (ILO) programmes in East Africa. Drawing on Gramsci’s conception of the ‘subaltern’, the article highlights the ways in which the articulation of ‘informality’ in policy documents is coloured by broader struggles over the political organisation of labour. The article develops this argument through two case studies. The first examines the World Employment Programme mission to Kenya in the 1970s that popularised the concept of ‘informal’ labour. The second is a contemporary programme on apprenticeships in the informal economy that originated in Tanzania.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2016.1260448

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