Seminar with Peter Reuter “How will European drug markets be affected by the Taliban opium ban? Illustrating a new approach to drug market analysis”, 07.12.2023
6 December 2023Soazig Dollet, “Entre contrôle de l’image de soi et fermeture. Retour sur la grammaire des attitudes adoptées par des personnes réfugiées dans le cadre d’entretiens biographiques”, Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, 2024
9 January 2024Laurent Fourchard, “In the Shadow of the State: the Making of Garage Laws in Lagos”, Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology, 2023
We would like to draw your attention to the publication of an article by Laurent Fourchard titled “In the Shadow of the State: the Making of Garage Laws in Lagos” in the journal Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology in December 2023.
Abstract
The National Union of Road Transport workers (NURTW) is the main transport organization in Nigeria and has replaced local governments in most garages of the country. The NURTW exercises its authority in Lagos garages through its own set of rules, qualified here as garage laws. They aim at providing revenues for the union, for state institutions, for police bodies and at ordering motor parks and disciplining drivers. Based on observations and 80 interviews with unionists, the article looks at the ways these laws are implemented by unionists and agberos or local touts turned into union workers. Some rules depend on the authority of union chairmen but most of them are routinized and powerful mainly because they are co-produced by the union and state institutions. Understanding garage laws helps to move beyond visions reducing transport unions as mafia organizations and states in Africa as weak institutions unable to implement state laws.