The informal economy revisited : examining the past, envisioning the future / edited by Martha Chen and Francoise Carre.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I: The informal economy revisited -- Chapter 1: Informality: the bane of the labouring poor under globalised capitalism -- Chapter 2: India's informal economy: past, present and future -- Part II: Informal employment: advances in statistics and research -- Chapter 3: Advances in statistics on informal employment: an overview highlighting WIEGO's contributions -- Chapter 4: Informal employment in developed countries: relevance and statistical measurement -- Chapter 5: The measurement of informal employment in Mexico -- Chapter 6: WIEGO research on informal employment: key methods, variables and findings -- Part III: Economics and the informal economy -- Chapter 7: Assessing taxation and informality: disaggregated frameworks matter -- Chapter 8: Informality and the dynamics of the structure of employment -- Chapter 9: Old and new forms of informal employment -- Chapter 10: Tax and the informal economy: lessons from South Africa -- Chapter 11: (Re)conceptualising poverty and informal employment -- Part IV: Labour law and the informal economy -- Chapter 12: Revising labour law for work -- Chapter 13: Domestic workers and informality: challenging invisibility, regulating inclusion -- Chapter 14: Enforcement of labour standards in developing countries: challenges and solutions -- Part V: Urban planning and design: including informal livelihoods -- Chapter 15: The informal economy in urban Africa: challenging planning theory and praxis -- Chapter 16: Urban design: imaginations beyond architecture -- Chapter 17: Informality, housing and work: the view from Indian cities -- Part VI: Homeworkers: extending labour rights in global value chains -- Chapter 18: Regulating corporations in global value chains to realise labour rights for homeworkers -- Chapter 19: Extending labour standards to informal workers at the base of global garment value chains: new institutions in the labour market -- Part VII: Street vendors: politics and possibilities for inclusion -- Chapter 20: Street vendors and planning paradigms -- Chapter 22: Street vendors and regulations -- Part VIII: Waste pickers: integration and rights in public waste management -- Chapter 23: Waste pickers and their right to the city : dispossession and displacement in nineteenth-century Paris and contemporary Montevideo -- Chapter 24: Managing urban waste as a common pool resource -- Chapter 25: The political work of waste picker integration -- Part IX: Social policy and informal workers -- Chapter 26: The place of informal workers in different approaches to social protection -- Chapter 27: Social protection and informal workers : rethinking the terms of inclusion -- Chapter 28: Social protection for women informal workers : perspectives from Latin America -- Chapter 29: Informal workers in a context of urbanisation and migration : reflections from China for social policy in Asia -- Chapter 30: Realising employer liability for informal workers : lessons from India -- Part X: Informal workers and the state -- Chapter 31: Deciphering African informal economies -- Chapter 32: Informal workers and the state in India -- Chapter 33: Informal domestic workers, informal construction workers and the state: what prospects for improving labour standards? -- Chapter 34: Waste & Citizenship Forum: waste pickers and the state in Brazil.

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"This landmark volume brings together leading scholars in the field to investigate recent conceptual shifts, research findings and policy debates on the informal economy as well as future challenges and directions for research and policy. Well over half of the global workforce and the vast majority of the workforce in developing countries work in the informal economy, and in countries around the world new forms of informal employment are emerging. Yet the informal workforce is not well understood, remains undervalued and is widely stigmatized. Divided into three sets of chapters, this book focuses on specific groups of informal workers - homeworkers, street vendors and waste pickers-to provide a grounded reality to the disciplinary debates. It calls for a paradigm shift in how the informal economy is perceived to reflect the realities of informal work in the global South as well as the informal practices of the State and Capital, not just Labour. Contributors to the volume bridge a range of disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, development economics, law, political science, social policy, sociology, statistics, urban planning and design. The Informal Economy Revisited is the culmination of twenty years of pioneering work by WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing), a global network of researchers, development practitioners and organizations of informal workers in 90 countries. Researchers, practitioners, policy makers and advocates will all find this book an invaluable guide to the significance and complexities of the informal economy, and its role in today's globalized economy"-- Provided by publisher.