Pursuing aspirations for decent sanitation work
- Author(s)
- Julian Walker, Adriana Allen, Ibrahim Bakarr Bangura, Pascale Hofmann, Wilbard Kombe, Nelly Leblond, Tatu Mtwangi Limbumba, Catarina Simoes Mavila Magaia, Claudy Vouhé, Julia Wesely
- Abstract
This chapter provides a gendered understanding of how the ‘rules’ governing sanitation practices and work (ranging across laws, bylaws, and social norms) affect the realisation of aspirations for decent work expressed by off-grid sanitation workers. We draw on our research in three African cities (Beira in Mozambique, Freetown in Sierra Leone, and Mwanza in Tanzania) with women and men involved in paid and unpaid sanitation work. Our analysis highlights that formal law-based rules are biased towards ‘modern’ grid systems and simultaneously over-regulate and exclude off-grid paid sanitation workers, making their livelihoods ‘undecent’ (impossible, arduous, under-rewarded), while under-regulating unpaid sanitation work (predominantly performed by women), thereby reinforcing their invisibility and lack of protection. In contrast, community-based bylaws often enable the livelihoods of off-grid sanitation workers and the de facto practices that meet the sanitation needs of the majority of African urban dwellers, while not always advancing safe and healthy working conditions. In this context, we explore how sanitation workers actively negotiate and use these different systems of rules to pursue their aspirations for decent work, in ways which range from coping mechanisms to more transformative strategies, often through collective action.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Geography and Regional Research
- External organisation(s)
- University College London, University of Sierra Leone, Ardhi University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Universidade de Lisboa, Unknown External Organisation Unbekannt/undefiniert
- Pages
- 205-228
- No. of pages
- 24
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003384816
- Publication date
- 2024
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 509001 Action research
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Social Sciences, Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all), General Earth and Planetary Sciences
- Sustainable Development Goals
- SDG 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation, SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth, SDG 5 - Gender Equality, SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/5b4aec3b-7bcd-4844-aa91-d12c781d96e2