DV433      Half Unit
The Informal Economy and Inclusive Development

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Contrary to conventional development thinking, the informal economy has expanded rather than declined in the face of economic development.  Informal employment accounts for nearly 60% of the world’s workers, and informal labour has become embedded in the heart of formal development processes, from global value chains to the gig economy. COVID-19 has further exposed both the central role and the vulnerability of informal workers across the globe, accentuating the call for a more inclusive approach to informality.  Practitioners, policy makers and academics seek a clearer understanding of how the informal economy works and its impact on poverty, employment, governance and inclusive development. In a globalising environment, are large informal economies a poverty trap or an engine of growth? Do they stimulate entrepreneurship and popular empowerment, or promote criminality and exploitation? How does a greater understanding of the size and varied organization of informal economies across the Global South affect policy on urban service provision, social protection or taxation? What are the implications of the informal economy for social cohesion and popular politics in developing countries?

This course will explore how the changing nature of informality in the era of globalization is shaping processes of growth and governance in the Global South. It will consider how the growing policy focus on inclusion is shaping the terms on which informal workers and economic systems are incorporated into the global economy. Using a comparative institutional approach, we will examine informal economies in a range of regional contexts, including Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, highlighting variations in size, relations with the state, global integration and development outcomes. Key issues covered in the course include how informal economies are reshaping labour markets, state capacity, gender empowerment, urban services, digital inclusion, social protection, taxation, and popular politics. Attention will be focused on the potential as well as risks of large informal economies in the face of contemporary development challenges, drawing on empirical evidence and comparative case studies from across the developing world.

15 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars in the WT. Seminars will be 90 minutes duration and lectures will be 90 minutes duration. There will also be a revision session in the ST.

Student on this course will have a reading week in Week 6.

Presentation

Essay (1500 words)

Formative coursework will involve a 1,500 word essay during the term and one class presentation.

1. Portes, Alejandro, Manuel Castells and Lauren A. Benton, eds. (1989) The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

2. ILO (2018) Women and men in the informal economy: a statistical picture (third edition) / International Labour Office – Geneva: ILO.

3. Perry et al. (2007) Informality: Exit and Exclusion, World Bank (available on Google Books).

4. Alfers, L., Chen, M. A., & Plagerson, S., eds. (2022) Social contracts and informal workers in the global south. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

5. Breman, J. (2013) At work in the informal economy of India: a perspective from the bottom up. OUP.

6. Kabeer, Naila (2008) Mainstreaming Gender in Social Protection for the Informal Economy. London: Commonwealth Secretariat.

7. Kinyanjui, Mary Njeri (2014) Women in the Informal Economy in Urban Africa:  From the Margins to the Centre. London: Zed Books.

8. Kuruvilla, S., Lee, C. K., & Gallagher, M., eds. (2011) From iron rice bowl to informalization: Markets, workers, and the state in a changing China. Cornell University Press.

9. Lindell, I., ed. (2010) Africa’s Informal Workers: Collective Agency, Alliances and Transnational Organizing in Urban Africa. London: Zed Books.

10. Meagher, K., Mann, L., & Bolt, M. eds. (2018) Globalisation, Economic Inclusion and African Workers. London: Routledge.

11. Woodcock, J. (2021) The fight against platform capitalism: An inquiry into the global struggles of the gig economy. University of Westminster Press.

Exam (50%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period

Essay (50%, 2500 words)

Exam (50%, duration: 2 hours) in the spring exam period.
Essay (50%, 2500 words) in the ST.