Geographies of the Contemporary Informal Sector in the Global South: Gender, Employment Relationships and Social Protection

Abstract

This article explores past and present understandings of the phenomena popularly known as the ‘informal sector’ in the global South in order to re-appraise its continued credibility as a conceptual framework for understanding work in the 21st century. The reality of the contemporary global economy is that a majority of the workforce are employed in casual, contractual, home-based or own-account work in the informal economy, escaping government regulations and social legislation. New worker-oriented and gendered definitions of the informal sector, which encompass new spaces of unregulated waged, home-based and even-forced labour, have re-awakened an interest in informality from a gendered, social justice perspective. Drawing on examples from the global South, with a particular focus on the Caribbean, the article examines how thinking about the informal sector has evolved from traditional enterprise analyses to more gender sensitive worker-focused perspectives. Following a critique of policies aimed to protect informal workers in old and new spaces of the global economy, it concludes by urging geographers to re-engage with a new geography of informality which moves forward the goal of protecting and mobilising the world's informal workers in all their guises.