Description:
A. Marie—Marginality and the Social Status of Urban Proletariat in Africa. Approaches and Critical Evaluation of the Concept of Marginality. Considered from a macro-sociological viewpoint marginality, in Third World cities, is the product of a continuous process of proletarianization. This process affects the dominated social formations, within the framework of international capitalism. As pauperisation drives them away from the countryside, growing numbers of peasants flock into the metropolises which fail to accomodate them due to the weakness and outside-orientation of the modem industrial and commercial sector. They settle down in the spatial marginality of the suburbs and the economie marginality of the so-called 'informai sector' where they become the 'reserve army of the industry'. However recent investigations in African towns show that the diversity of urban situations and socio-economic statuses pertains to a number of concrete determinants and demands a finer typological approach. Nevertheless the heterogeneous character of the marginal — or 'informai' —sector does not mean it escapes from capitalistic determination. A dynamic analysis of marginality as a process supports the assumption that it is in fact a modality of the capital/ labour relationship. Marginality is a product of capitalism concurring in its widened reproduction. The domination of the modem sector upon the informai one explains how the production relationships are actually exploitative, even if covertly so. This domination implies a process of proletarianization and underproletarian-ization of the margin people.