Power, Resistance, and the Contested Terrain of Workplace Control in Nigeria’s Informal Manufacturing Sector: A Labour Process Analysis

This doctoral study applies Labour Process Theory to analyse power dynamics, worker resistance strategies, and contested workplace control in Nigeria's informal manufacturing sector, generating original theoretical insights into how classic labour process concepts require modification for application in non-capitalist, non-standardised production environments. The informal manufacturing sector, encompassing artisanal production, small-scale workshops, and home-based manufacturing across Nigeria's urban and peri-urban zones, employs tens of millions of workers whose labour relations exist entirely outside the formal industrial relations framework, yet critical scholarly analysis of their labour process remains sparse. Drawing on Braverman's Deskilling Thesis, Burawoy's Manufacturing Consent, and Thompson's Revised Labour Process Theory, this study employs a critical ethnographic design involving 22 months of participant observation in workshops in Aba, Lagos, and Kano, supplemented by 95 worker and master-craftsperson life history interviews and documentary analysis. The original theoretical contribution is an Informal Economy Labour Process Framework that retheorizes managerial control not as Taylorist technical control but as patriarchal relational control exercised through apprenticeship debt bondage, social reputation management, and kinship obligation systems uniquely characteristic of Nigerian artisanal production. Worker resistance is theorized as preferentially taking symbolic and covert forms, including deliberate slowdowns masked as technical difficulty and strategic information withholding, rather than overt collective action. The study resolves a theoretical tension in the global labour process literature about whether consent or coercion dominates informal employment. Recommendations include apprenticeship rights legislation, informal worker organising rights, and informal sector labour inspection protocols. Keywords: labour process, workplace control, worker resistance, informal manufacturing, Nigeria