Migrant waste collectors in Thailand’s informal economy: Mapping class relations
Recent scholarship on primitive accumulation and deagrarianisation in the global South has addressed a decline in formal employment prospects, leaving most ex-peasants (and their heirs) struggling to earn a livelihood … Continue reading
African urbanisation at the confluence of informality and climate change
(Temporary open access) Africa contributes the least to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it faces climate change’s harshest consequences. Ramifications of climate change pose daunting multi-scalar urban challenges, specifically because … Continue reading
Writing Across Contexts: Urban Informality and the State in Guinea-Bissau, Estonia, and Germany
Urban research has long related informality to a lack of state capacity or a failure of institutions. This assumption not only fails to account for the heterogeneous institutional relations in … Continue reading
Vertical informality: The case of Kufr Aqab in East Jerusalem
This paper explores the phenomenon of vertical informality, an under-studied form of informal housing at large scale, and the role of developers within vertical informality. We investigate the case of … Continue reading
Informal work in sub-Saharan Africa – Dead end or stepping-stone?
Despite rapid economic growth in recent decades, informality remains a persistent phenomenon in the labor markets of many low- and middle-income countries. A key issue in this regard concerns the … Continue reading
Street food as infrastructure: consumer mobility, vendor removability and food security in Mexico City
Street food vendors are a ubiquitous but controversial feature of Mexico City’s foodscapes; in the context of urban renewal and modernization projects, vendors are frequently portrayed as backwards, dirty, and … Continue reading
The gender productivity gap – Evidence from the Indian informal sector
We examine the patterns and correlates of the productivity gap between male-owned and female-owned firms for informal enterprises in India. Female-owned firms are on average 45 per cent less productive … Continue reading
Transformation in street food vending in modernizing Bangkok: trading pattern, vendor and product
Street food vending in Bangkok has been transformed in terms of the trading patterns, vendors, and products by the modernizing process. Thai female commoners and Chinese men were the first … Continue reading
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