Governing the Informal

This chapter unsettles early, but persistent, takes on the informal economy, which explains it as economic activities that occur in the margins, shadows, or absence of the state. This chapter dispels this duality and instead aligns itself with newer research that argues that the state actively produces and uses informality. The findings of this chapter demonstrate how street vending is a product of a city’s complex informal and formal governing mechanisms, which create a blurred boundary, a gray area of operation for their street vending populations. This gray area allows the City flexibility in dealing with street vending, opening the door not only to contestation from below, but also the ability to use disproportionate levels of violence and coercion against marginalized communities.