ABSTRACT
In 1998, the International Labour Office (ILO) reported that the informal sector accounts for a large proportion of urban employment throughout the developing world. In Africa, informal employment constitutes over 60 per cent of total urban employment and it is estimated that most Asian, Latin American and Caribbean countries exhibit rates which exceed 50 per cent (ILO, 1998: 167). As urban population growth rates greatly exceed employment creation in many developing world cities, labour force growth is also predicted to accelerate rapidly over the next 25 years. A well recognised consequence of the inability of many countries to provide jobs has been the substantial increase in the proportion of the labour force seeking alternative forms of employment outside the boundaries of officially recognised work. The benefits of globalisation which were promised to many developing nations by global institutions, namely formal job creation through foreign direct investment and export-oriented production, have in reality only led to a rise in insecure and low-paid contractual work. In relation to the interdependence of employment and global economic forces, it is structural adjustment which has been most closely associated with formal sector retrenchment and redundancy (Green, 1995; Stewart, 1995), and it is the so called ‘informal sector’ which many households turn to in order to reduce their vulnerability (see de Soto, 1989; Thomas, 1992, 1995; Scott, 1994). In Latin America, for example, the informal sector grew from 40 per cent in 1980 to 53 per cent in 1990 as a direct result of the debt crisis (Stewart, 1995). It is now well established that in many low-income communities throughout the world, household income is less likely to be derived from regular waged employment than it is through a combination of casual activities, selfemployment and multiple occupations.
