Racial capitalism and women’s horticultural labour in Senegal: neo-housewifisation and the micro-politics of paternalism

ABSTRACT

The article addresses the social relations of labour in Senegal a decade after the land rush. Based on an intersectional feminist analysis of three firms, the study found that workers’ subjugation to patriarchal control in their households and workplace capitalists indicate the emergence of labour control associated with settler colonies of Africa. I argue that strategic alliances between patriarchy and racial capitalism influence the mobilisation and control of labour classes: i) through the subordination of women and younger male workers to farm management through the micropolitics of paternalism; and ii) through new spatial fixation forms of previously mobile footloose labour of women and junior workers staying close to their families for work such that they become a compliant and tied labour force. This occurs simultaneously with an urban exodus to the rural and peri-urban areas where the commercial horticultural farms are located. Class consciousness is stymied so resistance is circumscribed, taking limited, individualised forms.

KEYWORDS:

• Labour
• paternalism
• patriarchy
• housewifisation
• racial capitalism
• social reproduction

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of the Journal of Peasant Studies in particular Professor Ruth Hall for their substantial and generous comments on this article which contributed to make it better, and Professor Jacobo Grajales and Jaqueline Morse. I also wish to thank Professor Carlos Oya for his rich guidance and comments as well as Drs Leandro-Vergara Camus and Matteo Rizzo, all at SOAS. This paper has also greatly benefitted from the initial reviews of Professor Shapan Adnan and the reviewers of the 2020 JPS Writeshop in Critical Agrarian Studies and Scholar-Activism which took place online during the pandemic. Thanks to Hazel Gray for forwarding me the writeshop call and encouraging me to apply. The archive produced by feminist and decolonial scholar-activists and theorists of social reproduction has enriched this work, so thank to all the inspirational feminists for their ground-breaking work. Finally, I am thankful to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation for Governance and Development in Africa for funding the first fieldwork for this research (2016-17) and the Centre of African Studies Edinburgh for funding the second leg of this research. I am grateful to the Institute of Advanced studies of Saint-Louis, Senegal, and the Institute of Advanced Studies of Edinburgh for welcoming me during my sabbatical research in 2022.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 To Guinea Bissau, Dakar, and other cities.

2 Interview with top manager at Farm 2 in late 2016.

3 On 04 July 2016.

4 27 October 2017.

5 Summer 2022.

6 A la tâche.

7 The Senegalese Direction for labour raised it to FCFA37436 = 213,92 per hour in June 2018.

8 FGD (08 June 2017).

9 September 2022.

10 20 June 2016.

11 Conversation with a Farm 1 former worker 22/05/2017.

12 23 July 2017.

13 Sacc.

14 28 October 2017.

15 02 May 2017 ‘Borom njaboot xamuli jambatt’.

16 27 August 2020. Ataya, the local tea is very respected in Waalo and women, even when they worked, needed to be home in time to prepare tea for their husband and his friends.

17 10 May 2017.

18 These were launched in 2000 and were supposed to welcome 0–6 years.

19 The same study distinguishes the Cases des tous-petits with other publicly funded childcare programmes, the number of which was 0 in 2015 against 52 private ones (ANSD 2015, 29).

20 For instance, there was the nursery of the University Gaston Berger (for staff and students), where I was able to leave my child during fieldwork as I was affiliated with one of the University’s research centres.

21 26 October 2017.

22 Most educated staff members know who their delegates are and almost all of them trusted them to represent them well, and/or have seen their issues addressed when voiced by them.

23 One of them (local) confided experiencing growing tensions with the Senegalese head of his direction during our first interview testified during the second interview the problem was solved and he was transferred to another division. Another (local) staff who was experiencing tensions with a French supervisor was thinking of leaving the farm as the issue was not solved.

24 Yet the day workers are not always less educated, depending on the geographical area they originate from and family background. If Farm 1’s certainly are, Farm 2’s majority are mainly made of graduate students or at least A Level-holders who were coming to Farm 2 while waiting for better professional opportunities.

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Rama Salla Dieng

Rama Salla Dieng is an academic and a scholar-activist at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. Before the University of Edinburgh, she worked for five years in Policy Research at the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (UN-IDEP) and before that, she worked at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Mauritius. She also taught at the Department of Development Studies, SOAS. Rama’s research focuses on agrarian change, feminist political economy of development, labour care and social reproduction, politics of development in Africa (Senegal and Mauritius), and social movements. Rama is a convenor of the DSA Land, Labour and Politics of Development Study Group. Rama holds an MSc and a PhD in Development Studies from SOAS, University of London, a Masters from Science Po Bordeaux – IEP, France, and a Maîtrise in Political Science, Université Montesquieu, Bordeaux, France.