Chapter 11: Labor in Lagos – Alternative Global Networks

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Jade Miller
University of California Press

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Just as Hollywood production frequently departs the greater Los Angeles area for less expensive shooting locations worldwide, Hollywood studios have also expanded their interests globally, investing in everything from Bollywood studios to telenovela-producing corporations.¹ In this sense, the Los Angeles-based film and television industry is indeed a multilevel “global Hollywood,” as Miller and his colleagues convincingly illustrate in their so-titled book.² Accordingly, the individuals who make up global Hollywood’s workforce are both geographically diverse (in “runaway production” locations from New Orleans to Prague) and industrially diverse, working on domestic film and television productions as well as major international projects.

11.1: Introduction
Overview of the goals of the chapter: to examine how the deliberate pursuit of informality that characterizes Nollywood shapes issues of precarity with local labor.
11.2: The Context – Nollywood the Place
The decentralized nature of Nollywood, and the proposal of two places that might be considered the location of Nollywood: Lagos and Alaba Market, both known for having a generally informal and undocumented culture.
11.3: Implications of Opaque Distribution
Labor implications of the informal nature of Nollywood distribution, including the high level of power held by marketers, the dominance of guilds rather than unions, and the inability of government regulation to improve labor conditions.
11.4: Precarity, Repeat Collaboration, and Industry Entry
Examination of the factors contributing to the precarity of work in Nollywood for a non-marketer: short project durations that require workers to quickly find their next job, lack of recourse to collective bargaining or legal protection, and the heavy reliance on preexisting personal connections to break into the industry.
11.5: Conclusion
Ways in which the informality that characterizes everyday life in Nigeria is ingrained in Nollywood, as well as efforts from creatives in the film industry, government, and foreign interests to limit this informality.
11.6: Notes