Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
State represents the fundamental difference between formal and
informal activities for many researchers and policymakers today,
including the ILO.
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Mode of Production
- stemming from the structuralist school of
thought, radical commentators like Moser identified the mode of
production as the decisive factor in identifying informality. The sec-
tor was seen to employ a non-capital-intensive mode of production,
exploited by capitalism and the formal sector through the transfer of
economic surplus. Based on the Marxist concept of 'petty commodity
production', and the 'theory of unequal exchange', the informal sec-
tor is seen to be a
reserve army of labour
willing to work at subsist-
ence levels. Anyone observing women and children working in the
home-based enterprises in global supply chains would argue that
there is still much truth in this assertion.
Drawing on these approaches, the ILO adopted a simplified long-standing
definition of the informal sector in 1993 that referred to employment
and production that takes place in small, unregistered enterprises.
While enterprise-based definitions were widely used by governments
and international agencies to the end of the twentieth century, they
were criticized for being gender-blind (Scott, 1994) and failing to cap-
ture recent trends in the global economy. New perspectives have sought
to extend the definitional focus from enterprises that are not legally
regulated to employment relationships or workers that are not legally
regulated or protected, and they emphasize the blurring of boundaries
between the informal and formal sectors.
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Informal Relationships: Worker-centred Definitions,
Gender and Hierarchies of Risk
In seeking to include the entire spectrum of informality, new perspec-
tives centre upon the employment relationship or social relations of
labour rather than merely the enterprise. The revised definition focuses
both on enterprises that are not legally regulated and on employment
relationships that are not legally regulated or protected in either the
informal or formal economy. Here the informal sector is seen to be
highly segmented according to location of work, production system and
employment status, and to be composed of groups of skilled entrepre-
neurs, own-account workers, industrial outworkers and home-based
producers, unpaid family labour and a wide range of casual and waged
