Abstract
Today, informal marketplaces are not only experiencing increasing pressure from state and corporate actors, but the direction of this pressure is changing as well. From a neoliberal perspective, as well as in the perception of many formal sector actors, the most attractive achievement of informal marketplaces is the creation of new market environments, places for trade and commerce, that can offer opportunities for economic growth. However, policy approaches to the integration of the economic potential of informal marketplaces differ widely, ranging from market closures and relocations to structural upgrades and the transformation of informal markets into closely regulated shopping environments. The politically imposed transformation of informal markets discussed in this chapter highlights the ongoing and accelerating hybridization of formal and informal economic practices in the pursuit of new market opportunities. What is at stake in these changing policies, which are enacted through interventions in urban spatial organization, is not just a different way of dealing with the informal sector, but is a paradigm shift affecting many contemporary systems of socio-economic organization through the proliferation of formal-informal linkages.
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Notes
- 1.
An ILO report put the number even higher, stating that according to its calculations 2 billion workers, or 61 percent of the worlds employed population, were in informal employment (ILO 2018, 13).
- 2.
See, for instance, Hart (2012).
- 3.
This has notably helped to lay the foundation for policies formulated by agencies trying to improve the conditions of informal workers such as the ILO (International Labor Organization) and NGOs such as WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing), which grew out of a research network at the Harvard Kennedy School.
- 4.
In conjunction with separately published annual results of a so-called Out Out-of-Cycle Review of NotoriousMarkets, yearly Special 301 reports are released by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) under Sect. 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and list physical marketplaces around the world that are deemed notorious for violating the intellectual property rights of US companies and individuals. For the 2019 issues see https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/2019_Special_301_Report.pdf.
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Mooshammer, H. (2021). Right to the City, Right to the Market: The Global Struggle of Informal Marketplaces. In: Maurer, A. (eds) Handbook of Economic Sociology for the 21st Century. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61619-9_11
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