Understanding a Worker Recruitment as a Practice of Informality in Construction Work Packages

Abstract

Research into the recruitment of workers in construction tends to focus on the relationship between operating environments and informal recruitment of a worker. A second thread compares the informal and formal sector of the construction market. However, detailed understanding of how workers are hired and the role of objects in projects executed informally is limited. This study explores how objects feature when workers are engaged informally around specific work packages. A social practice approach is adopted, and practices enacted with workers recruited with minimal compliance to formal housing regulations are studied. Data is obtained through interviews and observations in a building project in Lafia, Nigeria. The results reveal that objects prefigured in hiring workers for different work packages which enabled construction practitioners to do four things: carry out a situated assessment, estimate the volume of work, negotiate verbal agreements, and coordinate work. This study argues that objects enable project parties to enter verbal agreements or invisible contracts.