‘Life is War’: Informal Transport Workers and Neoliberalism in Tanzania 1998–2009 |
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| Authors: | Matteo Rizzo |
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| Institution: | 1. is currently a Smuts Research Fellow at the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge, UK;2. from January 2012 he will be a lecturer in the economics of Africa at SOAS, University of London, UK (mr3@soas.ac.uk). His main research interests are informal labour under globalization, urbanization, the political economy of agrarian change (past and present) and development aid. He is currently completing a monograph entitled Being Taken for a Ride: Neoliberalism, Informal Labour and Transport in an African Metropolis, 1983–2010. |
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| Abstract: | This article analyses how informal labourers fare under flexible labour markets and economic liberalization, through a case study of transport workers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It highlights the mainstream conceptualization of urban informality as self‐employment and its influence on policy. The article stresses the importance of class differentiation in the Dar es Salaam transport sector and the predominance of informal wage employment, the uneven degree of power commanded by bus owners vis‐à‐vis informal unskilled wage workers and the pernicious consequences of the lack of regulation of the employment relationship on the workforce itself and on society. It then interrogates the criminalization of the workforce and shows how labour over‐supply, its fragmentation and geographical dispersion explain workers’ lack of response to their plight. The longitudinal study of the rise and fall (1998–2005) of a labour association within the sector further highlights the tensions among the workforce and the forms and limits of their solidarity. The conclusion of this study suggests some policy implications. |
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