informally, reflecting on and deepening the discussion of core conceptual debates introduced in Chapter 2 . It traces shifts in understandings of working informally from a focus on the informal sector, which centred predominantly on economic relations of the urban poor in cities of the global South, towards broader understandings around informal employment and the informal economy. The chapter makes use of illustrative case studies from across the globe to examine the diverse articulations of and urban contexts for working informally (see Figure 4.1 for examples of
punitive to supportive approaches. We begin by returning to core conceptual debates (dualism, legalism, structuralism and voluntarism) introduced in previous chapters and discuss their implications for policy and planning practice focusing on informal work (when reading this you may also ask yourself how these conceptual debates would inform responses to living informally, discussed in Chapter 6 ). The chapter then examines interventions that treat working informally as a ‘problem’ for urban development. These include evictions and revanchist responses that seek to
care, dependence and disability , Ratio Juris , 24 ( 1 ): 49 – 58 . doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9337.2010.00473.x Laidlaw , K. , Wang , D. , Coelho , C. and Power , M. ( 2010 ) Attitudes to ageing and expectations for filial piety across Chinese and British cultures: a pilot exploratory evaluation , Aging and Mental Health , 4 ( 3 ): 283 – 92 , doi: 10.1080/13607860903483060 . Lam , W.W.Y. , Nielsen , K. , Sprigg , C.A. and Kelly , C.A. ( 2022 ) The demands and resources of working informal caregivers of older people: a systematic review
through self-help or informal providers and often inadequate in nature) – with each of these factors meriting particular attention and requiring specific responses ( Chapters 3 and 6 ). Common characteristics of working informally – associated with the informal sector, informal employment and the informal economy – refer to economic activities, enterprises, jobs and workers that are neither regulated, nor receive legal or social protections from the state ( Chapters 4 and 7 ). Moving beyond living and working informally, which is widely captured in the existing
irregularities by companies who seek to avoid paying taxes to the government of the jurisdiction in which the owner should be a taxpayer. We explore these issues further in Chapter 4 , on ‘working informally’. Informality also takes place within and is shaped by the realm of politics and governance. This may occur through the use of Vitamin B or pulling strings to secure positions of power or personal favours by political authorities – practices often associated with corruption or clientelism (concepts explored throughout this book and particularly in Chapter 5
This book is the first to provide an introductory overview to the concept of ‘urban informality’, taking an international perspective across the global North and South. It explores theoretical understandings of the term, and looks at how it affects ways of living, such as land use, housing and basic services, working lives and politics.
Using a broad range of material to bring the topic to life, including non-conventional sources – such as fiction, poetry, photography, interviews and other media – the book helps students, practitioners and scholars develop learning and research on this topic. The book also includes interjections from diverse voices of practitioners, community activists and regional experts.
and community mobilizer in the informal neighbourhood of Mukuru in Nairobi, Kenya, reflecting on processes of community mobilization to raise awareness of poor services and infrastructure 1 Existing debates on urban informality tend to focus mainly on the dimensions of living and working informally, with less attention paid towards political elements. This chapter addresses this gap. It offers a conceptualization of governing informally and advances debates on urban informality as a tripartite concept associated with living, working and governing informally
running community-based projects in East London (www.community-links.org), has taken a particular interest in informal economic activity. Why? Because jobs, unemployment and the availability of cash-in-hand work have a significant impact on the lives of the local people with whom we work and are integral to their experience of poverty. ‘Need not greed’: in response to poverty Our latest research report, People in low-paid informal work: ‘Need not greed’ (Katungi et al, 2006), explores the experiences of people on low incomes who are working informally, including
totalizing narratives of pandemic responses and understand how ‘the urban majority is trying to survive and cope within structures of inequality that now bear both the new imprint of COVID-19 while equally holding the continuities of older forms of distancing and exclusion’ (as seen in Figure 8.1 ). Collective life offers a way to understand the everyday struggles of people living and working informally, linked in a meshwork of transactions which at times coalesce into solidarity: In these cities, getting by means being able to move, every day, both alone but also in
Collections, Cornell University Library These portrayals were indicative of a generally negative view of urban informality. It was characterized in crude, simplistic and politicized terms, using words for people living and working informally such as ‘urban informals’ ( Abrams, 1964 ) or ‘human flotsam and jetsam’ ( Lerner, 1967 in Lloyd, 1979 : 209). Such prevailingly negative views underpinned widespread systematic policies of eviction of informal neighbourhoods in the 1950s and 1960s, on the basis that these places presented a problem, rather than a solution to
