What is it about?
Informal employment is conventionally viewed as residual, marginal and sweatshoplike work that impairs urban economic development and social cohesion.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Reporting data from 313 interviews conducted with Moscow households during 2005/06, this negative reading is found to apply to just one segment of the informal labour market in this post-socialist city— namely, informal waged employment. Examining the multiple types of informal employment conducted on an own-account basis, more positive impacts emerge of this sphere as the key seedbed for enterprise development and principal mechanism for delivering community self help.
Perspectives
The outcome is a call for a finer-grained understanding and more nuanced policy approach towards informal employment that recognises its plurality of forms and their varying consequences for economic development and social cohesion.
Professor Colin C Williams
University of Sheffield
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Beyond Negative Depictions of Informal Employment: Some Lessons from Moscow, Urban Studies, November 2007, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1080/00420980701540945.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
