ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I set the stage for the analysis in the book, describing how informality has been constructed differently for street vending and domestic work in Tanzania. The focus is on the legal and political apparatus of the state in defining and regulating ‘informal’ work. I demonstrate that this process has been neither consistent, linear, nor final. Definitions of and responses to informality have varied across sectors and over time, thereby reflecting a dynamic process in which the state must maintain order while responding to shifts and pressures from both outside and within. Informality of certain forms of labour, then, has presented a temporary outcome of the interplay of the (national and global) political economy, shifting governance rationales, and locally specific socio-economic conditions. Negative attitudes towards informality, while inconsistent, also display the dualism and residualism engrained in the concept of the informal economy, which find their expression in the division between a ‘formal’ and an ‘informal city’, based on divisions in class and wealth.
