| dc.description.abstract | Over the past two decades, the Ethiopian government has pursued a strategy of structural transformation and rapid industrial expansion, aiming to increase economic growth and provide employment opportunities for the growing unemployed youth population by shifting focus from agriculture to industrialization. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in and around Bole Lemi Industrial Park (BLIP) on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, this thesis examines the impact of the advent of foreign companies and industrialization initiatives on the dispossessed peasants and industrial workers in Ethiopia.
The thesis findings are presented in four interrelated journal articles and an introduction (“kappa”). Unlike many other researchers who study either dispossession or labor separately, the thesis seeks to link dispossession and labor because those who were dispossessed to enable BLIP were promised industrial labor, but it was other rural migrants who eventually became employed in the factories. The thesis explores how the dispossessed peasants have primarily been seen as unfit for wage labor in the industrial park because they did not meet the factories’ criteria, such as literacy, skills, and productive age, and that many are left with no land, without sufficient compensation, and no work, resulting in not only being dispossessed from land but also from labor. Furthermore, the thesis provides insights into the industrial labor, from daily work routines to exploitation and resistance on the factory floors. Overall, the thesis argues that Ethiopia’s adoption of export-driven industrialization marginalizes dispossessed peasants and creates an uncertain future for them. Although it created some job opportunities for rural migrant workers, the wages were low, working conditions were harsh, and foreign companies in BLIP enforced strict profit-oriented discipline practices. By and large, the thesis argues that the “dilemma of development” affects both dispossessed peasants and factory workers, making them victims of industrialization. | en_US |
