Labor and Informal Transport in Africa

Abstract

Labor history has for a long time struggled with so-called “informal” labor, which is situated outside of regularised labor relations, but is widespread in many regions of the globe. The essay reviews five recent books from different fields on transport and labor in Africa, which explore the question of informality, everyday labor, labor organisation, and the infrastructure and technology of mobility. It develops an approach to informal labor that emphasizes historicity and a dialectical model between the stability of the transport infrastructure and the precarity of the workers that uphold it.