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To explain the prevalence and persistence of informal economic activity globally, scholars have recently advanced an institutional incongruence perspective. Institutional incongruence exists where there is a misalignment between what is considered legitimate by a society's formal institutions (e.g. its laws and regulations) and its informal institutions (e.g. norms, values and beliefs). Reporting findings from a series of qualitative focus groups in Bulgaria, Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, this article explores relationships between such institutional incongruence and informal economic activity. In particular, it sheds light on how informality and institutional incongruence are experienced by individuals in South-East Europe. It furthermore provides insights on the causes of such incongruence, and how it can lead to informal economic activity. Finally, it reports on individuals' perceptions towards different measures to tackle institutional incongruence and informal economic activity, with implications for policymakers in South-East Europe and more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informality is both produced by and an inherent characteristic of state practices. It thus requires close scrutiny of the structures, nature and uneven distribution of power between state and society. Using a focus on three different parks in Berlin, this article demonstrates how informality is appropriated and institutionalized in the planning regimes of pioneer urbanism at Tempelhofer Freiheit; how in everyday law enforcement, legality is stretched by policing illegitimate activities in zones of exceptions at Görlitzer Park; and why, in Preußenpark (aka Thai Park), the state embodies a theatricality of polyvalent performances, turning a blind eye to certain activities which are not tolerated in other settings. This analysis reveals the Janus-faced governance of social practices even as it exposes the inherent ambiguities in everyday statehood, in which the state is regulating activities that are beyond its rules and, at the same time, violating its own internal rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anybody wishing to position Bafatá (Guinea-Bissau), Berlin (Germany) and Tallinn (Estonia) side by side would encounter a number of reasons why these cities should not be compared. To unmake such hesitations, this article offers a conceptual and methodological exploration of the ways in which these cities might be analysed comparatively through a methodological strategy termed multi-sited individualising comparison. This exploratory approach allows to talk across individual research projects in different sites. In applying this methodology to Bafatá, Berlin and Tallinn, the authors demonstrate how case studies in these different cities can be compared around a common interest, namely informal processes and their relations to states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses formalization processes in the context of urban conflict, focusing on the ways adversarial power relations dictate methods and outcomes of formalization. Based on analysis of the formalization of public transport in ethno-nationally contested Jerusalem, the article demonstrates the production of a mode of formalization, which the author terms sub-formalization. This mode is characterized by severe deviation from professional and administrative norms, both in methods and outcomes, and usually results in inferior solutions and irregular arrangements for challenging informality. In sub-formalization, modern rationality -- which constructs planners' professional authority -- is eroded by powers from above and below. Therefore sub-formality represents a mutation of modern, rational, West-oriented planning, coming as a result of the encounter with informality and resistance in a way that blurs dichotomization between the formal and informal. In the context of an ongoing urban conflict, as in the case of East Jerusalem, sub-formality is also utilized by the state to maintain urban marginality and secure existing power hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents original research on relations between middle-class residents and informal-sector workers in Delhi, India. It shows how middle-class associations used their consumption preferences as well as relationships with local authorities to legitimize the work of street hawkers and waste workers. These findings suggest that the toleration of informality can be traced to governance regimes comprised of both state and non-state powerbrokers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The informal economy is typically understood as being outside the law. However, this article develops the concept 'social uses of the law' to interrogate how informal workers understand, engage and deploy the law, facilitating the development of more nuanced theorizations of both the informal economy and the law. The article explores how a legal victory over the Johannesburg Council by reclaimers of reusable and recyclable materials at the Marie Louise landfill in Soweto, South Africa shaped their subjectivities and became bound up in struggles between reclaimers at the dump. Engaging with critical legal theory, the author argues that in a social world where most people do not read, understand, or cite court rulings, the 'social uses of the law' can be of greater import than the actual judgement. This does not, however, render the state absent, as the assertion that the court sanctioned particular claims and rights is central to the reclaimers' social uses of the law. Through the social uses of the law, these reclaimers force us to consider how and why the law, one of the cornerstones of state formation, cannot be separated from the informal ways it is understood and deployed. The article concludes by sketching a research agenda that can assist in developing a more relational understanding of the law and the informal economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]