ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with how the boundary between the formal and the informal economy reflects the configuration of the role of the state and its relations with informalized labour. I focus on the close interplay of conceptions and imaginaries of economic (in)formality and actual processes of economic (in)formalization—legal and regulatory, spatial, and social. More than merely a result of state policies, the informal economy emerges as a site for testing and contesting the institutions, legitimacy, and effectiveness of the state vis-à-vis informal economy workers, as well as an arena for the enactment of neoliberalism. I illustrate this through the use of four examples: the building of the Machinga Complex, a shopping mall for ‘informal’ small-scale traders; the attempt by the Magufuli government to tax street vending; competing prescriptions for formalization by the International Labour Organization and by the Institute for Liberty and Democracy and World Bank; and finally the conception of the informal economy as a moral economy.
