The origins of informality: The ILO at the limit of the concept of unemployment
The official narrative suggests that the International Labor Organization adopted the term “informal sector” to replace “traditional sector” when the latter fell out of favor. This article argues that the adoption of the “informal sector” concept occurred after the ILO's post-war effort to gene...
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| Format: | Online |
| Language: | Portuguese |
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Universidade Estadual de Campinas
2021
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| Online Access: | https://econtents.sbu.unicamp.br/inpec/index.php/rbest/article/view/15818 |
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| Summary: | The official narrative suggests that the International Labor Organization adopted the term “informal sector” to replace “traditional sector” when the latter fell out of favor. This article argues that the adoption of the “informal sector” concept occurred after the ILO's post-war effort to generate a globally operational concept of unemployment for use in the “developing world”. ILO officials abandoned this purpose in the late 1960s when they realized that, where work for wages did not constitute a widespread social norm, an accurate measure of what they called “disguised unemployment” was impossible to construct. That led the ILO to develop alternative categories of analysis, including "employment in the informal sector”. But operationalizing this category proved difficult, and the ILO soon lost control of the policy implications of the indicators produced. |
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| ISSN: | 2674-9564 |
