Understanding West Africa’s informal workers as working class

Joshua Lew McDermott

Review of African Political Economy, 2021, vol. 48, issue 170, 609-629

Abstract: Informal workers in Africa are very often portrayed as primarily self-employed entrepreneurs and unemployed individuals largely excluded from capitalism, and thus insulated from class analysis and class dynamics. Drawing on a case study of informal workers in Sierra Leone, the article challenges this dominant understanding, arguing that informal workers experience the reality of class relations and that their material lives are shaped by, and help to shape, broader dynamics of capital accumulation. The research applies a holistic class analysis rooted in Marxist and feminist thought, arguing for an understanding of informal workers, including even small-scale ‘self-employed’ individuals, as workers exploited by, and opposed to the interests of, capital. In so doing, it challenges the simple understandings of working class as existing only and exclusively through formalised wage work, in favour of a more complex and inductive understanding of the reality of global capitalism, highlighting the relevance of class, value and exploitation to the lived reality of informal workers in Africa.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2021.1967734

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