Searching for the Informal Labor Movement: Theorizing Class and Collective Action among Informal Workers in West Africa

Abstract

Amid renewed debates and theorizing about informality and the role of informal workers in Africa and across the globe, there remains little in the way of class-based understandings of Africa's informal workers and of informal worker politics. Marxists, especially Analytical Marxists, have been slow to study and consider the role and potential role of informal workers in geopolitics and class struggle across the Global South, and Africa, in particular. Drawing on ethnographic field work and interviews conducted in Sierra Leone, and broader informal worker-led struggles and events across Africa and the Global South, this work argues for a renewed understanding of collective action and class formation among informal workers. JEL Classification: J0, J2, J6