South Africa’s Informal Economy: Reflections From a Second Exposure Dialogue in Durban
This report contains a collection of the personal and technical reflections of each one of the group that participated in the 2011 Durban EDP.
The EDP is a joint initiative of the research and policy network WIEGO, Cornell University in Ithaca, USA and the Self-employed Women's Association (SEWA). The basic objective of the EDP is to continue and develop further a dialogue between labour economists, SEWA activists, and WIEGO researchers which began in 2003 with an EDP in Ahmedabad. Each dialogue is organized around a set of exposures, where researchers live with and do the work of informal workers, who act as hosts to the researchers. Through the EDP, the researchers get a detailed and 'on-the-ground' understanding of the lives of informal workers.
These reflections, which have only been lightly edited, give the reader a personal account of the relationships built up among the group over the duration of the EDP activities, and of some of the technical debates about employment, unemployment and informal work in South Africa.
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