Wage Labor outside Wage Societies. Shaping Workers Discontent into Legal Complaints in Senegal

This article investigates appropriations and strategic uses of wage labor in Senegal. It mobilizes observations made at the Inspection du travail and the Dakar Tribunal de Grande Instance, where hearings related to labor disputes take place. It describes how the gap between the legal norm resulting from the Code du travail and daily practices is mobilized by workers and their union representatives during conflicts with employers. Wage labor then appears as a symbolic construction that is subject to much more disenchanted uses than in the most widespread narratives of the political history of the workers' movement in the European industrial context.