%0 Journal Article
%9 ACL : Articles dans des revues avec comité de lecture non répertoriées par l'AERES
%A Salvaire, Côme
%T Scrap metal dealers and the formation of a guild-like organization in Lagos, Nigeria
%D 2025
%L fdi:010096616
%G ENG
%J Industrielle Beziehungen
%@ 0943-2779
%K NIGERIA ; LAGOS
%N 1
%P 63-90
%R 10.5771/0943-2779-2025-1-63
%U https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010096616
%V 32
%W Horizon (IRD)
%X This article looks at the formation of structures of collective organizing among Lagos' metal scrap dealers since the early 2010s. While the development of their activities from the 1990s has been premised on the commodification of labor and secondary metals, scrap dealers have attempted to develop means to control labor competition, limit market volatility, and protect themselves from corporate (as well as public) encroachments. At the same time, the efforts at developing a monopoly over the trade have served the stabilization and intensification of inter-worker exploitation, reflecting the broader heterogenization of living conditions among Lagos' popular classes. Rather than as a union, I argue the organization developed by metal scrap dealers is better accounted for as a guild-like organization. Indeed, at the same time as it integrates elements of union culture, its core features align with the historical forms of guilds in urban Nigeria, which dominated labor organizing until the mid-20th century. By tracing the history of Nigerian guilds, the article highlights their enduring relevance as an institutional repertoire from which urban workers borrow to counter pressing problems related to labor competition, capitalist encroachments and volatile commodity markets. Within a complexifying landscape of labor mobilization and industrial relations, guild-like institutions offer analytical leverage in accounting for the specific forms taken by worker organizing in contexts marked by high urbanization and long histories of municipal involvement in labor regulation.
%$ 100TRAVA ; 106GESOC1