Work across Africa: labour exploitation and mobility in Southern, Eastern and Western Africa

This special section of Africa contains a selection of articles presented over two panels at the European Conference of African Studies (ECAS) in Lisbon in 2013, on African-based labour studies, from historical to more contemporary themes. This part issue encompasses earlier literature but also considers various approaches that go beyond a standard proletarianization narrative. Articles can be grouped into four themes: changes in classic patterns of interregional labour migration and dependence on masculine labour forces; new forms of movement and migration within and beyond national borders; new ways of exploring agrarian history from a labour perspective; and gender and the relationship of work and household. Articles: Introduction. Work across Africa: labour exploitation and mobility in Southern, Eastern and Western Africa (Stefano Bellucci, Bill Freund); The rise and rise of agricultural wage labour: evidence from Ethiopia’s south, c.1950-2000 (Girma Negash); ‘Dash’-peonage: the contradictions of debt bondage in the colonial plantations of Fernando P (Enrique Martino); Migrant workers into contract farmers: processes of labour mobilization in colonial and contemporary Mozambique (Helena Prez Nio); Challenging ‘umthetho we femu’ (the law of the firm): gender relations and shop-floor battles for union recognition in Natal’s textile industry, 1973-85 (Alex Lichtenstein). Bibliogr., notes, ref., summaries in English and French. [ASC Leiden abstract]