ABSTRACT
The process of economic growth between 1940 and 1972 produced an enormous numerical expansion in the labouring class of Lima, as well as increasing internal heterogeneity. One measure of this was the polarization between formal and informal sectors: 60 per cent of manual workers were employed in small informal enterprises and only 19 per cent in ones with more than a hundred workers. However, the formal/informal dichotomy was not the sole or even the major source of segmentation amongst these workers. It was certainly not a sufficient basis for identifying a separate ‘class’ division such as a ‘labour aristocracy’ and a ‘lumpenproletariat’ or a ‘formal proletariat’ and an ‘informal petty bourgeoisie’ (Portes 1985). Skill and gender were two further divisions, just as important for earnings as enterprise size.
