Sociologie et criminologie-Open Access
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Casual Employment: its Ambiguity, Heterogeneity and Causes in NigerianManufacturing Sector

Bamidele R

The concept casual employment is riddled with ambiguity and paradoxes. Making sense of them is the key to understanding the significance, especially for labour productivity and casualization. Definitional ambiguity reflects changes in the form rather than substance of long-term employment relations in the workplace. The characteristics of most casual workers indicate that this form of employment has more to do with limited choices available to young people, women and low skilled workers than any flourishing of choices for people at work. The growth of casual employment is seen as an outcome of recruitment practices developed to meet internal labour demands in the context of changing labour regulations and changing relationships between firms and the labour market. While casual employment is a function of ‘demand-side’ factors, the recruitment strategies that stimulate its growth are formed through managers’ perceptions of the quality and reliability of the available labour supply. Though ‘demandside’ factors, especially firm size and union activity, are major determinants of the use of casual employees, attention has also been paid on the role of institutional factors that have enabled casual work to flourish in widening gaps in labour regulation. The growth of casual work has generated considerable interest, but only recently has attention focused on its heterogeneity. In an overview of the dynamics, therefore, this study tends to examine casual employment, its ambiguity, heterogeneity and causes in Nigerian manufacturing sector.