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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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | Brasil |
| Institución: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) |
| Repositorio: | Revista Brasileira de Economia Social e do Trabalho |
| Idioma: | portugués |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:inpec.econtents.bc.unicamp.br:article/15818 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://econtents.bc.unicamp.br/inpec/index.php/rbest/article/view/15818 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Secteur informel Chômage déguisé Histoire des statistiques économiques OIT Sector informal Desempleo encubierto Historia de las estadísticas económicas Setor informal Desemprego disfarçado História das estatísticas econômicas Informal sector Disguised unemployment History of economic statistics ILO |
| Sumario: | 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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