Camilla Houeland

• PhD
• Researcher at Fafo Foundation

This article brings new perspectives on state–citizen relations in African petro-states by analysing the role of Nigerian trade unions in the recurring fuel subsidy protests. Nigerian trade unions have played an instrumental role in protests against fuel subsidy removals since the mid-1980s, most recently in the massive 2012 protest known as ‘Occup...

We examine how trade union actors at various scales of organisation and influence have engaged in the just transition agenda in Norway. The Norwegian model of industrial relations represents a democratic and highly institutionalised system of social dialogue, and allows us to assess the extent to which a just transition agenda is anchored at differ...

This article examines challenges to the construction of climate solidarity between different social actors in and beyond the petroleum industry, using the vantage point of oil workers. Theoretically, we use the notion of alienation to show how oil workers experience challenges to climate solidarity with different potential allies. We argue that oil...

Though millions of Nigerians were protesting in the streets against the repeal of subsidies in January 2012, the government did not call for negotiations until the oil unions threatened to shut down oil production. However, production was never shut down, and the oil unions were criticised for “empty threats” and for abandoning their historical dem...

Energy geographers seem to agree that the carbon economy represents a symbiotic relationship between social and material components. There is less consensus, however, on how this symbiosis is best conceptualized. We critique the portrayal of carbonscapes as loosely associated, flexibly (re)arranged and easily enacted upon through small-scale radica...

In December 2020, the Danish parliament decided to terminate all oil and gas extraction by the end of 2050 ’as an important step’ to becoming climate neutral in the same year. The agreement also stated that the Danish example would have to inspire larger oil and gas-producing countries to follow suit. This perspective derives five lessons relevant...

In this report, we document how policy makers and representatives of businesses and civil society organisations (including trade unions and environmental groups) have outlined pathway scenarios towards net-zero carbon emissions and a phase-out vision for the Norwegian oil and gas industry. They have developed these two scenarios participating in a...

In the petroleum-dependent Norwegian economy, climate change politics challenge the powerful petroleum industry, and Norwegian shop stewards in that industry find themselves in cross-pressures of representation and responsibility. In this article, we investigate what role trade unionists in the oil sector play and can play, in a green and just tran...

In 2019, mentions of “oil worker” in Norwegian newspaper coverage of climate change more than quadrupled, mostly reflecting a rise in politicians vying for the support of this critical constituency. This article explores the rise of the oil worker in newspaper coverage in the period 2017–2021, identifying the main agents of change in the dominant n...

The oil and gas (O&G) sector is a major source of Norway’s national wealth and a pillar of its robust welfare state. At the same time, it makes a significant contribution to the global climate crisis. The oil and gas industry makes up 28% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions, the second-highest source after transport, and this is only co...

Popular and labour protests have effectively resisted fuel subsidy removals. The dominant international discourse on fossil fuel subsidies emphasises that they contribute to carbon emissions and are economically unsustainable and socially inefficient. In that light, protests appear to challenge climate change mitigation and the interests of workers...

The article examines how organised labour as an important strategic actor in the political economy engages with climate change mitigation policies. By using The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO‐Norway) as a case study, we investigate how sectoral unions view the national confederation as a contested space of engagement in which they prom...

This article explores relations between popular protests and institutional politics in a petroleum-dependent economy. The 2012-protest against fuel subsidy removal in Nigeria was one of the biggest popular mobilisation in Nigeria’s history, and possibly the largest in the wave of protests in Sub-Saharan Africa. This article uses perspectives of con...

The purpose of this thesis is to explore trade union agency and its limits in an African country that is highly dependent on oil. The overall research question is: What are the opportunities and constraints to trade union agency in Nigeria? This case study of the Nigerian trade unions focuses on the 2012 fuel subsidy protests that constituted among...

The trade unions’ instrumental role in four decades of successful popular resistance against subsidy removals is widely recognised, but insufficiently understood due to inadequate consideration of the particularities of labour. The subsidy contestations are considered a barometer of Nigerian politics, and the 2012 subsidy protests – often referred...