Reconsidering Informality: Perspectives from Urban Africa

Mapping stakeholders and identifying institutional challenges and opportunities for waste management in towns of Uttar Pradesh, India

“…Figure 1 sets the collection of municipal waste just under the horizontal axis, indicating not very strong institution. The findings of this study nullify the idea that formality represents stability while informality represents volatility (Tranberg Hansen & Vaa, 2004; Van Assche et al, 2014).…”

“…In a broad sense, formality refers to operating under a set of rules established by the state, whereas informality refers to adhering to a set of rules established by negotiation and consensus among diverse actors (Banks et al, 2020). Formality is linked to stability in the extant literature, while informality is connected to instability (Tranberg Hansen & Vaa, 2004; Van Assche et al, 2014). In urban areas of emerging economies, however, the demarcation between formal and informal settings is ever shifting and speculative (Goldman, 2011; Roy, 2005; Schindler, 2014).…”

The Paradox of Informal Settlements Revealed in an ATLAS of Informality: Findings from Mapping Growth in the Most Common Yet Unmapped Forms of Urbanization

“…Different organizations, national and municipal government agencies, and scholars disagree on which variables are determinant of an informal settlement [21]. Defining informal settlements is a complicated endeavor; the literature on informal settlements, both current and historic, spends a significant amount of time attempting to determine the limits between what is formal and informal [22][23][24][25][26]. Authors call attention to the need for more specificity in the way the phenomena of informal settlements are defined and classified [27].…”

The concept of ‘Informal Economy’ revisited: A review of related literature

“…Reimer (2006), for example, asserts that rather than represent the distinction between formal and informal economy as an uncontested description, it is more useful to recognise that the meaning of the informal economy is largely based on the objectives and interests of the person arguing the case, as well as the context in which the activity occurs. Hart (as cited in Hansen and Vaa, 2004) also suggests that when so much of the economy is 'informal' as he would describe the economy of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Jamaica, we are entitled to ask whether the term has outgrown its usefulness. It is the stand of this paper that the term has not outlived its meaning or usefulness.…”

“…It was evident at the time that many economic activities were taking place but a substantial part of these activities happened outside the structures of the state, went 'unnoticed', and escaped analytical categories of economic models. It was these activities that Hart labelled the 'informal economy' (Hansen and Vaa, 2004). Hart (1973) describes the informal sector to comprise informal income opportunities that basically escaped state enumeration.…”