Labour futures: A comparative study of precarious labour and cooperative enterprise in Kampala and Dar es Salaam

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Informal or "precarious" labour - associated with insecure work, low pay and poor conditions - is on the rise globally. This trend raises pressing questions about the future of work. Who will work, under what conditions, for whom? These questions are particularly salient in Africa where informal labour accounts for an estimated 86 percent of total employment. Moreover, nowhere is the informal workforce growing faster than in the region's expanding cities.In response to this labour precarity, a large body of work emphasises the need for more formal sector employment; however, precarity persists across both the formal and informal economies of the global south and, increasingly, the global north too. Meanwhile, 'formalization' efforts yield mixed results with no clear impact on poverty levels. The proposed research adopts an alternative emphasis, building on work examining self-organising as a means for the precariously employed to secure better working conditions. This line of inquiry also raises important questions about how, especially in the authoritarian contexts that prevail in much of Africa, collective action can help redress the power imbalances that disadvantage workers relative to private sector and allied state actors. Various forms of worker collective action-including trade unions, worker associations and the like-have produced mixed results in the past. This study will examine the specific role of co-operative (co-op) organising in mitigating the adverse conditions that perpetuate workers' precarity. Through a comparative study of urban co-ops in Kampala and Dar es Salaam, the commercial capitals of Uganda and Tanzania, the research will determine whether and how these groups enhance the economic security and organisational power of their members. By focusing on co-ops, the research will address an important empirical gap in the literature. Co-ops remain an understudied topic, and this despite their expansion and diversification within urban informal economies, including in Africa amidst a recent co-op "revival". Co-ops are also of growing interest to policymakers, and yet their efficacy in tackling urban poverty and insecure employment remains poorly understood.For its conceptual framing, the research will adapt a "power resource approach" from labour studies. It will analyse how the success of workers' co-op organising depends on their "structural power", their "associational power" and their strategic position within the wider political landscape. This three-part focus will create room to help advance related scholarly debates, namely: (1) on informal workers' position within the wider economic system, whether marginal or potentially more decisive in shaping economic outcomes; (2) on the distinctive power resources that co-op organising may provide, specifically how democratic ownership may distinguish co-ops from other kinds of worker self-organising like unions; and (3) on the significance of worker collective action within the larger urban political arena, notably its potential to create more inclusive politics within otherwise authoritarian contexts. In this way, the proposed research will offer a fresh contribution to literatures on informal labour and co-ops plus urban and authoritarian politics, in the process clarifying the relationship between bottom-up collective action and top-down strategies of authoritarian political dominance. For evidence, the study will examine four co-op case studies, two from each city. These will be selected from transport and trade because of these sectors' economic centrality, their tendency to grow along with a growing urban workforce, and the prevalence of casualised labour conditions. The case study analysis will draw on a strategic mix of methods and sources. It will use original survey data as well as interviews and archival data to examine the co-ops' organisational histories and the experience and work-life histories of their members.