Legal segmentation and early colonialism in sub‐Saharan Africa: Informality and the colonial exploitative legal employment standard

Abstract

Labour markets in sub‐Saharan Africa are characterized by a gendered division between formal and informal sectors. This article argues that this division originates from a rationality introduced by racist and gendered colonial legal segmentation, produced by a variety of legal regimes in and beyond employment law. Labour market segmentation in postcolonial settings cannot be understood or overcome without analysing the specific colonial institutional origins of the commodification of labour. In sub‐Saharan Africa, the “colonial exploitative legal employment standard” that commodified labour focused on black African male employees for European employers, excluding or marginalizing women and domestic labour relations.

Introduction: Worldwide patterns of legal segmentation in employment law

“…A particular type of legal segmentation comes to the fore under colonial employment rule (Fechner 2022). The extractivist logic of this rule tends to develop a productivist form of gender segmentation.…”

“…For one thing, the basic SER element -work perceived as commodified and subordinated labour -cannot serve as a universal guideline for the shaping of work as a societal form of reproduction (Supiot 1999;Mückenberger 1996). It also has to be freed from the postcolonial heritage still impacting former colonies in the global South (see Fechner 2022). Colonial employment laws were based on a slavery-like dependent worker status and on the statutory dichotomization between normal and stigmatized workers -in other words, legal segmentation par excellence.…”