ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the role of the state in the spread of labour-market informality. Economic informality is generally understood as arising from an absence of effective government intervention in the economy owing to institutional deficits, principally in the state's capacities to regulate economic activities occurring within its territory. Research on the informal economy has implicated the state in the spread of casualized employment relations, in large part because of the rolling back of government enforcement activities. The chapter highlights organizing efforts by day labourers to place a floor under wages and working conditions in the informal economy. Low-wage labour markets in major US cities have become key sites of political activism and worker organizing in the early twenty-first century. Both domestic workers and day labourers are employed in 'grey markets' of urban economies where they are hired directly by employers with few labour protections and little government oversight of workplace conditions.
