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The Urban Informal Economy Revisited

Issue #: 218  | Volume #: 45  | Number #: 1
Date: January 2018
Interviewer: Alexander Scott
Interviewees: Ray Bromley and Tamara Diana Wilson

Short Description: The distinction between “formal” and “informal” jobs and enterprises was first introduced in the 1970s and has been very widely used ever since. The underlying assumption was that the formal economy would gradually expand and dominate, and the informal economy would gradually disappear. The reality, however, associated with neoliberal economic development and growing socio-economic inequality, is that the informal economy has persisted and sometimes grown, and that job security and benefits in the formal economy have often diminished. This theme issue focuses on the informal economy under neoliberalism, with case studies of some of the most significant and persistent occupations. Several of the articles focus on the process of the “formalization” of informal workers, a goal expressed by the International Labour Organization, but often fraught with difficulties.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

is a theoretical and scholarly journal for discussion and debate on the political economy of capitalism, imperialism, and socialism in the Americas. For more than forty years, it has published timely, progressive analyses of the social forces shaping contemporary Latin America.