Precarious and non-precarious work in the informal sector: Evidence from South Africa

Abstract

The research analyses the precarious and non-precarious work practices within the informal sector. Labour in the informal sector and in regions without strong labour relations is not uniformly precarious but is categorised by a bimodality of incomes, citizenships and conducts. This creates opportunities for insurgent modes of counter-conduct in the interstices of regulations and social conventions, but has also resulted in exclusive local citizenships and revanchist strategies. From numerous in-depth interviews, the study found that the Covid-19 lockdown and economic recession led to a new dialectical relationship between long-term residents and a precariat in-group of non-propertied actors, recent migrants and immigrants in the informal sector. Long-term residents with local citizenship aggregated formal and informal incomes and secondary incomes within the household, elevating them out of precariousness, although primarily active in the informal sector. These included strategies of adverse incorporation and revanchist conducts to maintain incomes for non-precarious workers. Marginalised precarious workers shifted to modes of counter-conduct, hiding the true nature of the business, evading strict social conventions on local trade and pursuing new inter-ethnic citizenships based on strategic partnerships.