Publications
Publications of Interest
By Region/Country
- Strategies to Promote Transition to Formality in Africa: ILO contribution to the joint AU/ILO workshop on the informal economy in Africa. Dakar, October 2008
Mozambique
- Policy Brief #1, “Rural Labour Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa: A New View of Poverty, Power and Policy.” November 2008, The Centre for Development Policy and Research at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Drawing on original data from a large rural labour market survey in Mozambique, the authors, Christopher Cramer, Carlos Oya and John Sender of SOAS, are able to reveal the diverse and complex reality of rural labour markets in sub-Saharan Africa and confirm that such markets are central to the economic prospects of a large number of poor rural workers, both women and men.
In the process, they call into question the reliability of most standard surveys and the applicability of most standard theoretical models of the labour market. The policy implications of their findings also run counter to some of the current biases of the international donor community, such as concentrating on improving the lot of small farmers, instead of wage workers, and offering microcredit for self-employment instead of providing sizeable credits and infrastructure investment to stimulate more decent-paying, poverty-reducing jobs on larger farms.
- Unni, Jeemol and Uma Rani. 2008. Flexibility of Labour in Globalizing India: The Challenge of Skills and Technology. Tulika Books, New Delhi, India.
- Burr, Kathleen. 2008. Social Protection for India's Informal Sector Workers: The role of women's civil society and the state. VDM Verlag, Germany.
India
- Almeida, Rita and Pedro Carneiro. 2008. Mandated Benefits, Employment, and Inequality in a Dual Economy. (Paper)
Brazil
- Birkbeck, Chris. 1978. Self-Employed Proletarians in an Informal Factory :
The Case of Cali’s Garbage Dump. Vol. 6, No. S/10, pp. 1173-l 185. World Development, Pergamon Press.
Colombia
- ILO Issue Brief 1, July 2008
- ILO Issue Brief 2, July 2008
- ILO - Palestine
Read Abstract
- ILO Policy Brief - July 2008
- Bernhardt, Annette, Siobhan McGrath and James DeFilippis. Unregulated Work in the Global City: Employment and Labor Law Violations in New York City, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, 2007.
- Duneier, Mitchell. Sidewalk. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
An insightful ethnographic study on street vendors and magazine scavengers working on the 6th Avenue in New York City.
- Edgcomb, Elaine L. and Maria Medrano Armington. The Informal Economy: Latino Enterprises at the Margin. Microenterprise Fund For Innovation, Effectiveness, Learning and Dissemination (FIELD), Aspen Institute. September 2003.
- EITC and Microentrepreneurs: One Program's Microentrepreneurs: One Program's Experience. September 2005, Issue 16, Field Forum.
- Flaming, Daniel; Brent Haydamack and Pascale Joassart.Hopeful Workers, Marginal Jobs: LA’s Off-The-Books Labor Force. 2005. Prepared for the Los Angeles Economy Project under the auspices of the City of Los Angeles, Economic Roundtable.
- The Informal Economy and Microenterprise in the United States. Issue 14, Field Forum, March 2003.
- Losby, Jan L., Marcia E. Kingslow and John F. Else. The Informal Economy: Experiences of African Americans. ISED Solutions, September 2003.
- Medina, Martin. The World's Scavengers. AltaMira Press, 2007. There are several iterations of this publication in several countries. The chapter on Mexico has an interesting section on scavenging along the US-Mexico border and the implications on that economy due to NAFTA, globalization, etc.
- Microenterprises in the U.S. Informal Economy: Summary Research Findings. Issue 15, Field Forum, July 2004.
A summary of the reports on the experiences of african americans and latinos in the informal economy.
United States