Agro-Industrial Labour in Kenya: Cut Flower Farms and Migrant Workers' Settlements

ISBN-13: 9783030180485 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 284 str.

Gerda Kuiper

Spis treści

Chapter ​1: Introduction.

1.1 Lake Naivasha: A Contested Research Sige

1.2 Ethnographic Research in an Agro-industrial Context

1.2.1 Methodology

1.2.2 My Position within Social Hierarchies

1.3 Theoretical Positioning

1.3.1 Agro-industrial Labour

1.3.2 The Production of a (Gendered) Workforce

1.3.3 Translocal Labour Migration in Kenya

1.4 Aims and Outline of the Study

Bibliography

Chapter 2: Naivasha’s History: From Livestock to Flowers.

2.1 Colonial Period: Settlers and Squatters

2.2 After Independence: “A Farming Town with Steady Growth”              

2.3 Blooming Business: The Establishment of the Cut Flower Industry

2.4 Naivasha in the Twenty-First Century: Paradise Lost?              

2.5 Conclusion: Naivasha’s Past and Present

Bibliography

Chapter 3: Coming to Naivasha: Finding a Place to Stay and a Place to Work.

3.1 Three Workers

3.1.1 Flora

3.1.2 Lucy

3.1.3 Glory

3.2 The Decision to Move

3.3 Finding a Place to Stay

3.4 Finding a Job: The Naivasha Labour Market

3.5 Finding a Job: Farm’s Recruitment Processes              

3.6 Finding a Job: Migrant Workers’ Preferences              

3.7 Conclusion: The Use of Networks

Bibliography

Chapter 4: Inside the Farms: Rhythms and Hierarchies.

4.1 The Lay-out of the Farms

4.2 Daily Routines: Accountability and “Responsibilisation”

4.3 Rhythms of Labour: Yielding to the Flowers and the Markets

4.4 Farm Hierarchies: Discipline and Social Distance

4.5 Unskilled Labour? The Need for Stability and Experience

4.6 Changing Labour Conditions: Standardization and Unionization

4.7 Gender on the Farms: Divisions of Labour, Sexual Harassment, and Gender Committees

4.8 Ethnicity on the Work Floor: Which Language to Speak?

 4.9 Conclusion: Disciplined Labour

Bibliography

Chapter 5: Workers’ Settlements: In Search of Order.

5.1 The Establishment of Settlements in Kenya

5.2 The Eight Naivasha Workers’ Settlements

5.2.1 Karagita

5.2.2 Trading centres DCK/Sulmac and Kongoni

5.2.3 Kihoto

5.2.4 Kamere and Kwa Muhia

5.2.5 Kasarani

5.2.6 KCC

5.3 The Economic Position of Settlements’ Residents: “Hustling” and “Struggling”

5.4 The Settlements’ Illicit Economies: Fish Poaching, Chang’aa, and Sex Work

5.5 Ethnicity in the Settlements: Mixed Marriages and Mutual Mistrust

5.6 Community Relations: Churches, “Self-help Groups”, Colleagues, and Neighbours

5.7 Governing the Settlements: Creating Order and Allowing for Disorder

5.8 Conclusion: “Spontaneous” Settlements?

Bibliography

Chapter 6: Building a Future: Preparing to Go ‘Home’.

6.1 The Meaning(s) of Home

6.2 Strategies for the Future: Constructing a “Home”

6.2.1 Investing in Networks: Visits and Remittances

6.2.2 Investing in Assets: Plots and Livestock

6.2.3 Investing in Groups: Participation in Organizations

6.2.4 Postponing the Future: Flora and James

6.2.5 A Woman’s Future: Helen

6.2.6 A Future in Naivasha: Moses

6.3 Leaving Naivasha: Wage Labour Pasts?

6.4 Conclusion: Securing the Future

Bibliography

Chapter 7: Conclusion.

Glossary.

Index.

O autorze

Gerda Kuiper, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist with a regional focus on Eastern Africa, a thematic focus on economic anthropology and globalization, and a strong interdisciplinary commitment.

Blurb

‘Gerda Kuiper has done a great service to anthropology and African studies by writing a book on the important but understudied global flower industry of Naivasha, Kenya. This will be a valued resource for courses in African studies, economic anthropology, and development studies.’

—Peter D. Little, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and Director of Global Development Studies, Emory University, USA

‘In this rich and detailed ethnography, Kuiper seeks to situate labor in the cut flower industry within a wider social and historical field in which the environment, gender, colonialism, and broader political economic factors all come to matter.’

—Sarah Besky, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International and Public Affairs, Brown University, USA

‘Kuiper has provided us with a superbly crafted ethnography of the migrant farm workers whose labour the flower farms of Naivasha depend upon. This is a classic of its genre, and a timely reminder of both the resilience and fragility of Kenya's labour market.’

—David M. Anderson, Professor of African History, University of Warwick, UK

This ethnography analyses labour relations within the export-oriented cut flower industry at Lake Naivasha in Kenya. Though this agro-industry has attracted critical attention from journalists and non-governmental organizations, this book is the first comprehensive, social scientific analysis of the industry’s labour arrangements and production processes. Gerda Kuiper here interprets the work on the farms as ‘agro-industrial labour’: a labour system characterized by high levels of discipline and a strict rhythm of work, due to the demands posed by a highly perishable agricultural product. This framework enables the author to draw on insights from a wide range of anthropological and sociological studies on (agro-)industrial wage labour around the globe. This mixed-methods approach, deployed alongside rich ethnographic detail, allows the author to center the flower farm workers in her analysis.

Gerda Kuiper, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist with a regional focus on Eastern Africa, a thematic focus on economic anthropology and globalization, and a strong interdisciplinary commitment