Precarious Work, Social Exclusion, and Labour Market Vulnerability Among Internally Displaced Persons in North-East Nigeria: An Industrial Relations Perspective

This doctoral study provides an original industrial relations analysis of precarious work conditions, social exclusion dimensions, and labour market vulnerability among internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe States, North East Nigeria. Despite the North East displacement crisis constituting one of the largest internal displacement situations in Africa, the employment relations dimensions of IDP labour market integration have received negligible scholarly attention in the industrial relations literature, which has focused primarily on stable formal employment contexts. Drawing on Rodgers' Precarious Employment Framework, Sen's Capabilities Approach, and a novel IDP Employment Relations Framework developed inductively through this study, a critical mixed-methods design was employed involving 140 qualitative interviews with IDP workers, camp administrators, humanitarian employers, and government labour officials, supplemented by quantitative survey data from 380 working-age IDPs across five formal camps and three host community settlements. The study makes three original theoretical contributions. First, it generates an IDP-specific conceptualization of precarious work that incorporates displacement-induced vulnerabilities absent from mainstream precariousness literature. Second, it documents a systematic social exclusion from formal labour market protections that compounds physical displacement with occupational dispossession. Third, it theorizes humanitarian employment relationships as a distinct industrial relations category governed by a unique institutional tripartism involving NGOs, government, and IDP communities. Recommendations include IDP-specific labour policy frameworks, UN agency employment standards for humanitarian contexts, and integration of IDP workforce data into national labour force surveys. Keywords: internally displaced persons, precarious work, social exclusion, North East Nigeria, industrial relations