Asserting autonomy and belonging in precarious times
Working lives of women labour broker workers in Johannesburg, South Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5761271 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Femke Brandt (University of Johannesburg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 4-6 |
| Pages | 327-344 |
| Publication date | 2022-11-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Third World Thematics A TWQ Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2379-9978 • E-ISSN: 2380-2014 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/23802014.2022.2070270 |
| OpenAlex | W4225319371 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 27 |
In this article, I present ethnographic insights into a precarious workers’ struggle at the Heineken Sedibeng brewery nearby Johannesburg. Through oral histories of key women organisers in this struggle, this article looks at the ways neoliberal externalisation of labour shapes contemporary working lives in South Africa. I use the concepts of autonomy and belonging to interpret workers’ realities and efforts to change precarious conditions. From the workers’ experiences and women’s biographies emerge two key contestations that reveal what it means to be a precarious worker under neoliberal capitalism. The first contestation exists inside South Africa’s labour relations system that creates conditions of unbelonging and precarity for the majority of workers. At the Heineken plant, the established union sided with the employers and entrenched externalised labour arrangements. The second contestation concerns the presence of violence in social relations negotiated by women workers in all spheres of their lives. This article shows women workers’ persistent efforts to reconstitute relations and spaces of belonging on their own terms to oppose injustices in the workplace and in South African society
Autonomy · Capitalism · Ethnography · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Precarity · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · South African History and Culture
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‘Amcu by day, workers’ committee by night’
Precarious work and precarious resistance
Trickle-out Urbanism
Understanding labour politics in an age of precarity
From the shop floor to the kitchen table
What about the workers? The demise of Cosatu and the emergence of a new movement
The new struggles of precarious workers in South Africa
Maria's Burden
Detroit
Contracting out of the Constitution
Why Work? Do We Understand What Motivates Work-Related Decisions in South Africa
Stepchildren of Liberation
Conditional Belonging
Explaining Social Consciousness
New Regional Imaginaries in Post-Apartheid Southern Africa - Retail Workers at a Shopping Mall in Zambia
The Precarious Present
Work, Employment and Society
The South African labour movement
Farm worker identities contested and reimagined
Migrant women and South African social change
People refusing to be wealth
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,75 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2023 (2) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |