Informality as global capitalism's unconscious

The informal economy did not disappear, nor did it decrease. Despite early predictions of its eventual demise, it has not only grown worldwide, but also emerged in new forms and unexpected places. This book presents some in-depth cases regarding specific informal economic activities in Brazil. Using an ethnographic approach, the Author shows the social and economic processes that allow the informal economy to be reproduced, revealing the complex and heterogeneous relations between the formal and the informal parts of economy. Throughout detailed descriptions of informality in action, the book provides interesting starting-points to investigate the renewed dilemmas of the informal economy and its linkages with globalization processes. The book was released on October 2010. http://us.macmillan.com/theinformaleconomyandemploymentinbrazil

Forum for Social Economics, 2024

this article explores the theoretical and practical challenges involved in characterizing the informal economy. the discussion draws on three books that offer complementary perspectives: The Informal Economy by colin c. williams; The Informal Economy Revisited: Examining the Past, Envisioning the Future by Martha chen and Françoise carré (eds.); and The Informal Sector in Ecuador: Artisans, Entrepreneurs and Precarious Family Firms by Alan Middleton. the review highlights three pivotal dimensions of the informal economy: how its definitions and related policies are shaped by the dominant theoretical framework; the neoliberal tendency to frame informal self-employment as entrepreneurship, often ignoring socioeconomic context; and the critical role of gender discourse, especially concerning care work and the intersectionality of oppression, in understanding informality.

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1987

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Journal of Illicit Economies and Development

Illicit economies are an issue of paramount importance and an opportunity for social mobility for millions in Brazil. The literature about them lacks empirical accuracy and less normative interpretive keys. Based on field research conducted between 2005 and 2018, this paper explores two stories: i) that of a young man working for illegal markets in the outskirts of São Paulo; and ii) that of a Toyota Hilux he stole. It adopts an approach centered on a theory of everyday action and focused on the boundary between legal and illegal and its pragmatic social effects. I argue the lack of public regulation of illicit economies has, over the last few decades, prevented their actors from obtaining social rights and started a vicious cycle of violence and reproduction of inequalities on a social level, as well as given rise to criminal populism in the public arena.

Saitta, P. J. Shapland & A. Verhage (eds.) Getting By or Getting Rich? The Formal, Informal and Criminal Economy in a Globalized World. The Hague: Eleven.

This short essay is an introduction to the volume "Getting By or Getting Rich. The Formal, Informal and Criminal Economy in a Globalized World". The author rejects merely institutional and legalistic definitions of this phenomenon and suggests that the study of informality should rather include the State among the actors and the elements to be put under scrutiny. Informality is seen as «space of contradictions» within which oppression, discretion, resistance, liberation, and the reproduction of social relations constantly take place. A presentation of collected essays follows.

Informal markets arise on the fault lines inscribed by global alliances of money and power: wars and humanitarian crises, national and infrastructural borders, the worldwide trade in waste and the marginal spaces of urban transformation. They act as globalization’s safety valve while also providing livelihoods for millions of people trading in the streets of cities around the world. This book tracks the powers, currents and actors driving informal trade. It documents the growing influence informal economies are having on human co-existence on a planetary scale. Informal markets may have turned into key urban economic frontiers, but can they also produce positive social and political change? Exploring the conflicted realities of informal market worlds, this reader brings together texts on urban informality, global struggle and design activism by eminent scholars and practitioners, including Teddy Cruz, Alejandro Echeverri, Fonna Forman, Keith Hart, Peter Mörtenböck, Helge Mooshammer, Vyjayanthi Rao, Ananya Roy, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett, AbdouMaliq Simone, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jean-Philippe Vassal, Matias Viegener and many others.

PURPOSE – The purpose of this paper is to explore the links between “informal economies” and the concept of “resistance.” The author argues that the petty illegalities of the dominated and subaltern classes should be seen in their connections to the illegalism of the élites and the state. Within this framework, the informal economy is seen as both the outcome of a set of material conditions aiming at the subordinated inclusion of entire classes of citizens, and the mark of the willingness by these same subalterns to evade the bonds imposed on them by the legislations and the social hierarchies. DESIGN AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH – A review of the ethnographical and socio-economical literature on the issue of informality, accompanied by ex-post reflections on pertinent studies conducted in the past by the researcher. FINDINGS – Against the dominant public rhetoric, the informal economy is here seen as a particular space of enactment by the dominated and subalterns aimed at self-producing paradoxical forms of inclusion within social contexts characterized by barriers to access integration within mainstream society. It is argued that in consideration of the power relations that structure the “field,” researchers themselves become part of the struggle counterpoising individuals and institutions, and should thus make a choice among the clashing parties. ORIGINALITY – The paper draws on a vast body of literature that appears to go in the same direction. However, it radicalizes the instances proposed by previous authors and studies, and draws conclusions concerning the nature of the object and the ethics of research, that are opposed to the prevalent approaches to the subject.

The informal economy is a constant, though only partially visible, undercurrent of social and economic life of European cities. Through its more romantic and touristic guises of street trading, markets and selling roses in restaurants, its seedier links with drugs and prostitution, and the economic toe-hold it provides for immigrants, young people and students, it links with the formal economy and with the forces of formal and informal social control. The history of research into the informal economy per se is, however, meagre. There is a plethora of research into its individual manifestations (focusing on prostitution, or drug cultures, or the economy of drugs, or sweat-shops, or illegal dumping of waste), but a lack of concentration on the informal economy itself, its threat to formal social and economic order, its links with formal and informal social control and cultures, and its particular form in different cities (given their populations, opportunities and cultures). There is even less comparative research, looking at the manifestations of the informal economy in different countries, and linking these to economic and social structures and cultures.

Urban Anthropology, 2011