Journal of Transport Geography xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

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Journal of Transport Geography

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Theorising informality and social embeddedness for the study of informal

transport. Lessons from the marshrutka mobility phenomenon
⁎
Lela Rekhviashvili , Wladimir Sgibnev
Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Schongauerstraße 9, 04328 Leipzig, Germany

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This paper builds upon recent post-structuralist writings on informal economic practices, using most importantly
Informality a Polanyian institutionalist framework, to discuss formal/informal and market/non-market practices in the
Social embeddedness transport sector. The article proposes a critical reading of the literary canon of informal transport, which largely
Marshrutka assumes a naturalness and omnipresence of markets. We illustrate how reductionist definitions of informal
Marketisation
transport marginalise analytically important empirical detail, and furthermore, lead to misleading theoretical
Polanyi
Ride-sharing
conclusions. In contrast, we analytically de-couple informality and markets, showing that formal and informal
economic practices can be embedded in diverse social-cultural institutions. Such a theoretical framework allows
for consistent evaluation and empirical examination of transport options, as substantiated by evidence from the
marshrutka mobility phenomenon in Bishkek and Tbilisi. We observe marketisation, dis- or re-embedding, for-
malisation and informalisation as dynamic, inter-dependent and conflictual processes. On these grounds, the
article argues for a critical re-appraisal of other forms of informal transport, old and emerging, both in the Global
South and the Global North.

1. Introduction
While urban transportation challenges are intensifying across the
globe (Pojani and Stead, 2015) millions of urban dwellers, often pre-
dominantly poor and marginalised communities, depend on informal
transport for daily mobility in many cities of the Global South. There is
a growing academic recognition of the need “to make informal urban
transport and the kinds of mobility it enables more visible within de-
bates concerning the future of cities” (Evans et al., 2018, p. 1). Recent
transformations in urban mobility sector put informal transport under
pressure. On the one hand, informal transport is associated with traffic
congestion, health and safety risks, and environmental degradation.
Public authorities tend to further marginalise informal transport due to
their noncompliance to the ideals of ‘modern’ and ‘smart’ cities, offer
alternatives to informal transport (such as BRT systems), and try to
formalise and regulate the sector (Paget-Seekins, 2015). On the other
hand, digitalisation, particularly the spread of taxi aggregators is
transforming informal transport. Both of these processes prompt re-
sistance and labour contentions (Bundhun, 2018), amplifying the need
of a thorough conceptualisation of informal transport. However, we
argue in this article, that the existing dominant definitions of informal
transport are thin, reductionist, and detached from recent academic
debates on informal economic practices as well as urban mobilities. We
rely on feminist post-structuralist writings on informal and diverse
economies (Cameron and Gibson, 2005; Gibson-Graham, 2008; Gibson
et al., 2010), and a Polanyian institutionalist framework (Polanyi,
1957, 1968) to rework informal transport theorisation. Empirically
drawing on the example of post-Soviet paratransit, the so-called
marshrutkas, we challenge the dominant association of informal trans-
port with laissez-faire transport, and insist on taking the socially em-
bedded character of informal transport seriously.
The dominant share of informal transport literature (Cervero, 2000;
Cervero and Golub, 2007; Golub et al., 2009; Kumar et al., 2016;
Wilson, 2011) defines informal transport as unlicensed or not endorsed
by the state, and reduces it to market forces. Naturalising both, in-
formality and markets, the literature equates the two without asking
which processes lead to informalisation and/or marketisation of urban
transport.1 The reductionist and economistic definition of informality in
informal transport literature is challenging for a few interrelated rea-
sons. For one, the literature is detached from recent debates in critical

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: l_rekhviashvili@ifl-leipzig.de (L. Rekhviashvili), w_sgibnev@ifl-leipzig.de (W. Sgibnev).
1
Some authors argue for using the term paratransit instead of informal transport, “as these services are not necessarily provided by informal businesses or
unregulated” (Ferro and Behrens, 2015, p. 123). Yet this ‘informal-versus-paratransit’ distinction is made possible precisely because of the endorsement of a narrow
definition of informal transport as a commercial transport not licensed by state.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2019.01.006
Received 13 October 2017; Received in revised form 18 October 2018; Accepted 7 January 2019
0966-6923/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Rekhviashvili, L., Journal of Transport Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2019.01.006
L. Rekhviashvili, W. Sgibnev
urban transport literature. Influenced by the critical mobilities turn, in
the past decade transportation research has moved beyond orthodox
and economistic perspectives, focusing on the social meanings of mo-
bility, power relations, access inequalities, and mobility (in)justice
(Hannam et al., 2006; Kębłowski and Bassens, 2017; Kwan and
Schwanen, 2016). Second, transdisciplinary contributions on informal
economic practices have theoretically moved away from, and produced
vast empirical evidence against a reductionist readings of economy.
Feminist geographers forming the ‘diverse economies’ school of thought
have argued that economy is not reducible to commercial and mone-
tised exchange, but is comprised of diverse, also non-market production
and exchange processes (Cameron and Gibson, 2005; Gibson-Graham,
2008; Gibson et al., 2010). In a similar vein, social science research on
the post-socialist region has emphasized the socially embedded char-
acter of informal practices (Morris and Polese, 2014; Polese et al., 2018;
Williams and Onoschenko, 2014). Finally, some mobilities scholars are
frustrated with the reductionist definitions, to the point of re-
commending to abandon the informality concept altogether. For ex-
ample, Belk suggests that informality obscures rather than reveals the
richness of particular mobility practices, which “have been studied
primarily as informal paratransit systems without a historical or social
life” (Belk, 2014, p. 443).
Instead of abandoning the informality concept, this article offers a
reconceptualization of informal transport based on a critical readings of
informal economic practices. Informality is an important empirical
entry point to observe relations beyond formal institutions and formal
economic exchange, as well as a significant and widely shared marker
of socio-economic relations remaining beyond state regulation (Routh,
2011), but still interwoven with negotiations of state and citizenship. As
Roy argues, “informality is inscribed in the ever-shifting relationship
between what is legal and illegal, legitimate and illegitimate, author-
ized and unauthorized. This relationship is both, arbitrary and fickle
and yet is the site of considerable state power and violence” (Roy, 2009,
p. 80). Resonating with the broader call to politicize transportation
research, we propose that informal transport literature learns from the
informal economies and ‘diverse economies’ literature and discusses
informality in relation to marketisation and social embeddedness. We
primarily rework the original Polanyian definition of marketisation and
social embeddedness (Polanyi, 1957), and incorporate informality in a
Polanyian institutionalist perspective.
Relying on the mentioned theoretical framework, we suggest to de-
couple informality and markets, currently equated in informal transport
literature. We argue that informal economic practices in general, and
informal transport in particular, can be and often are comprised of both,
market-like and non-market-like, socially embedded economic ex-
changes. Importantly, even if they co-exist, there is a tension between
markets and social embeddedness, each holding the propensity to
marginalise, and ultimately informalise the other. Neither market-
likeness nor social embeddedness can be taken for granted, but should
rather be questioned in each empirical setting. Therefore, when re-
searching informality of formalisation processes, we suggest paying
attention to both, whether market–relations are formalised, but also
whether social embeddedness is formalised or remains informal.
Further elaborating on the Polanyian framework, we distinguish be-
tween vertical (state-enforced) embedding and horizontal (informal)
embedding. The emphasis based on vertical and horizontal embedding
has grave implications for informal transport literature as well as
policy-making. Since reductionist definitions exclusively care for
market-based exchange, the focus on market supporting institutions
(such as property relations, operating rights) prevails when looking into
formalisation processes. Such a view dismisses how market-supporting
institutions can indeed be formalised, but socially embedding institu-
tions might not be: labour relations, sometimes-even customers' rights
remain informally negotiated. The spread of digital taxi aggregators is a
good example at hand. In the Global South, the business side is formal,
but labour relations remain informal. In the Global North, however,
2
Journal of Transport Geography xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
previously vertically embedded, state-enforced labour regulations of
transport workers are side-lined, causing an informalization, or as ex-
pressed in popular language, an ‘Uberisation’ of employment relations.
To illustrate the merits of the proposed theoretical framework, we
look at the marshrutka mobility phenomenon in Eurasian cities. The
empirical discussion on marshrutka mobility primarily relies on four
months of fieldwork conducted in August–September 2016 and
January–March 2017 in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and Tbilisi,
the capital of Georgia. In both cities, we conducted lengthy informal
interviews with marshrutka drivers, as well as participant observation
during ride-alongs and at terminal stations. In both cases, we selected
one suburban terminal station as a primary observation site and con-
tinuously stayed in touch with a few collectives of drivers. However, we
also interviewed drivers on other routes, to corroborate findings and
account for spatial differences in working conditions between drivers
on different routes. We conducted semi-structured interviews with
marshrutka operating companies: four in the case of Bishkek, and with
the only operating company in Tbilisi. We also interviewed re-
presentatives of city transport authorities, transport workers' unions in
Tbilisi, and an association of marshrutka operator companies in Bishkek
(where drivers are not unionised). The fieldwork examined the systems
governing marshrutka mobility in the two cities, how those systems
affect drivers' working conditions and the affordability and safety of
service, and finally, how the system has been transforming throughout
the past two decades.
Marshrutkas proliferated in post-Soviet cities in early 1990s. With
the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the subsequent economic
downturn, the once-extensive public transport infrastructure began to
rapidly decay, suffering from disinvestment and a broader labour
shortage. In combination with very low (albeit rapidly rising) private
car ownership levels, the collapse of public transport systems severely
impaired the provision of mobility services. Simultaneously, pre-
dominantly privately owned minibuses, known locally as marshrutkas,
spread as a substitute to publicly run trams, buses and trolleybuses
(Sgibnev and Vozyanov, 2016), and have since become an important, or
even prevailing mode of public transport. Over time, the sector grew
and diversified; marshrutka routes multiplied, overlapped, and stabi-
lised once higher market shares were attained. In most cases, Soviet-era
legislation, procedures and norms with regard to line operations, safety
standards and reporting were formally maintained, but rarely enforced,
which allowed the marshrutka sector to flexibly address diversifying
mobility needs. The proliferation of this flexible, privately owned and
operated, and barely coordinated mode of transport was considered to
be one of the key signifiers of bottom-up entrepreneurship in a period of
economic transition ‘from state to market’.
Marshrutka sector transformation in past two decades illustrates
how misleading a reductionist definitions of informal transport and
equating informality with markets can be. At a first glance, marshrutkas
would be classified as informal paratransit, privately operating transit
services existing within weak regulatory frameworks, (Ferro and
Behrens, 2015), and counted as demand-responsive, laissez-faire
transport. A closer look at the sector reveals that the marshrutka phe-
nomenon is much less market driven and more socially embedded then
assumed (Sanina, 2011). Even if for-profit, the sector is largely shaped
by non-market norms and institutions, involving reciprocity, mutuality
and sharing. Relationships at differing scales and between diverse ac-
tors – passengers and drivers, drivers and operating companies, com-
panies and city governments – are negotiated informally and are in-
fluenced by a range of socio-political considerations that defy the profit-
seeking principle as well as private property enforcement
(Rekhviashvili and Sgibnev, 2018a,b). If, however, we applied the ex-
isting definition of informal transport as not endorsed or licensed by
public authority, (Cervero and Golub, 2007), then marshrutkas could
easily be seen formalised since the mid-2000s. In the two cities ex-
amined in this article, Bishkek and Tbilisi, marshrutkas are licensed and
taxed by their respective municipal governments, and route operating
L. Rekhviashvili, W. Sgibnev
rights are assigned based on competitive tendering. Nevertheless, in
both contexts, marshrutkas systematically bypass traffic regulations and
informally negotiate lower fines for rule evasion. A significant share of
money circulation in the sector is informal, as are the relationships
between transport workers and the company, and among transport
workers. Acknowledgement of the constitutive role of informal, socially
embedding practices enabled by a Polanyian reading allows drawing a
more comprehensive picture of the sector. Even more importantly, such
a reading allows to account for socio-cultural situatedness of informal
transport, and possibly equips the research for comprehending grie-
vances and contentions that go along with modernisation and for-
malisation efforts.
In what follows, we first critically review the conceptual toolkit
offered by the informal transport literature. Second, we move on to
overview broader debates in informality literature to identify theore-
tical and conceptual innovations that can potentially overcome the
limits of existing informal transport literature. Third, we attempt to
consolidate a Polanyian framework to define informality, markets and
embeddedness. Finally, we come back to demonstrating the implica-
tions of concept definitions for an empirical examination of urban
transport, using the example of the marshrutka mobility phenomenon
on the post-Soviet periphery. In the concluding part, we summarise the
contribution and draw implications for low-tech as well as high-tech
flexible urban transport research.
2. Informality: the blind spot of informal transport literature
Despite its significance to the lives of millions of citizens, particu-
larly in the Global South (Pojani and Stead, 2015), informal transport
remains under-theorised and detached from wider debates about in-
formality. The existing literature offers invaluable empirical material
but suffers from several conceptual challenges. First, it relies on a thin,
formalist understanding of informality, assuming a universalised
market-likeness of informal transport. Hence, it focuses on the ration-
ality of actors, and the costs and benefits of economic exchange, at the
expense of examining the social-historical situatedness of informal
transport. Second, informality, in this strand of literature, is a de-
scriptive term or a condition, and is rarely explored as a process with
own enabling causes and effects. Finally, these inter-related challenges
stem from a disengagement of informal transport literature with trans-
disciplinary debates around the informality concept on one hand, and
debates about the development and role of markets and the state for
social well-being on the other.
The literature on informal transport, in the formalist tradition,2
reduces it to an exchange of free and rational individuals selling and
buying services according to de-personalised demand and supply
principles. The key and defining publications on informal transport in
different global regions, by Cervero and Golub, broadly define informal
transport as transport that is unlicensed or not officially endorsed
(Cervero and Golub, 2007). Cervero's publications also identify a more
specific definition of informal transport as a commercial, market-like
2
The formalist reading of economic exchange refers back to debates in eco-
nomic anthropology in the 1970s between the so-called formalists and sub-
stantivists. The former current largely consists of scholars who have accepted
and defended classical and neoclassical economists' assumptions about the
universal rationality of economic actors, and their primarily profit-motivated
action. The substantivist current, on the other hand, was influenced by the
works of Hungarian political-economist and economic historian, Karl Polanyi,
who argued that economic exchange can rarely be reduced to economistic
reasoning. Instead, it should be examined in relation to its embeddedness in
non-economic institutions, whether they are small-scale, such as family and
kinship networks, or large-scale cultural and political institutions. While purely
formalist readings of economic exchange might have become a rarity in such
fields as anthropology, they still prevail in many other fields and sub-fields of
social sciences.
3
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endeavour: “...informal transport involves commercial transactions
which distinguishes them, as transportation services, from the provision
of free lifts (…) It is this more limited definition of informal transport,
namely ones involving pay−for−services, that is adopted in this study”
(Cervero, 2000, p. 3). Indeed, some approaches to informality, pri-
marily the legalist-institutionalist ones, assume that informal economic
practices are predominantly market-like (Chersi, 1997; De Soto, 1989,
2000; Olaya et al., 2007; Schneider et al., 2010). The informal transport
literature, however, explicitly defines informality as a market-based
exchange. In doing so, it dismisses a range of economic exchanges that
take place beyond state attention as irrelevant for the analysis. This
literature then directly characterises informal transport as a perfect
example of a self-regulating market at work: “Informal transport is
about as close to laissez-faire transportation as can be found. Through
the invisible hand of the marketplace, those who are willing−to−pay
for transport services make deals for lifts with those who are will-
ing−to−provide” (Cervero, 2000, p. 3). Hence, the criteria for the
laissez-faire transportation are that transport provision depends on
deals between free rational individuals, or the demand-and-supply
principle.
The portrayal of informal transport as laissez-faire leads to the
second challenge, the conclusion that whenever there is no state,
markets fill up the void. This literature is not concerned with the
question of how and why the process of informalisation takes place,
since the absence of a state is always the explanation at hand.
Furthermore, this literature naturalises state absence by implicitly or
explicitly articulating the inferiority of state-run transport and idea-
lising the spontaneity of informal transport: “The rich mix of en-
trepreneurial services found in the third world evolved spontaneously,
without central control or direction (...) Rather, it is largely a product of
marketplaces allowed to run their own courses” (Cervero, 2000, p. 16).
Informalisation is explained by the deficiencies of municipal transport:
“The most important factors behind the growth of the [informal] sector
were thought to be the declining quality of transit service, poor or
outdated route connections, low levels of comfort and safety, rising
transit fares in real terms, and long and increasing waiting and travel
times” (Golub et al., 2009, p. 603). As a tendency, the reasons behind
the decline of formal transit service are not sought after.
It needs to be emphasized, that the existing informal transport lit-
erature offers unique, comparative and empirically rich material con-
cerning urban mobility across different world regions. In contradiction
to own theoretic convictions, informality literature also shows how
unregulated competition can undermine service quality and passenger
safety, and can worsen transport workers' employment conditions, and
notes how transport workers' efforts at coordinating and self-organising
are directed at mitigating the adverse consequences of marketisation
(Cervero and Golub, 2007). Moreover, this literature often hints on the
fundamentally political character of mobility governance, showing how
monopolies and rent-seeking agents create conditions for informalisa-
tion (Golub et al., 2009). Nevertheless, due to a restrictive theoretical
framework and a lack of conceptual elaboration, the rich empirical
material is not reflected in theoretical arguments. Due to this challenge,
social and economic exchange beyond states and markets remain un-
named and marginal to the analysis. Importantly, non-market-like in-
formal practices that shape informal transport are empirically described
but not theorised.
Beyond mainstream informal transport literature, some research
offers critical and substantivist discussion of informal transport. A
number of anthropologists (Bürge, 2011; Sopranzetti, 2014), mobility
scholars (Rahman and Assadekjaman, 2013) human geographers (Diaz
Olvera et al., 2016), and development economists (Rizzo, 2011), write
on the topic without sharing Cervero's and his colleagues' assumptions
on informal transport. In some cases, the primacy of profit-seeking is
directly contested. However, these dispersed efforts are, to our best
knowledge, not mobilised to systematically oppose and re-examine the
dominant thin definition of informal transport. Thus, authors do not
L. Rekhviashvili, W. Sgibnev
directly refer to or engage with informal transport literature. In rare
cases, authors reject existing definitions of informal transport, sug-
gesting that such descriptions might be reductionist and detach mobi-
lity practices from their respective social-historical context. Such cri-
tical appreciation prompts authors to argue against the usage of the
term altogether, and to bring in alternative concepts such as subaltern
mobilities (Best, 2016). Then the question is: can further research rely
on existing formalist readings of informality to study urban transport? If
this reading seems insufficient, should the concept of informality be set
aside?
3. The difficult trade-off between informality and social
embeddedness
The assumptions of the informal transport literature – equating in-
formal transport with the market, and seeing its emergence as sponta-
neous – are problematic. Writings on informal economic practices in the
past few decades have introduced a sea of qualitative and quantitative
evidence that contradicts these assumptions. These writings indicate
that informal practices are not necessarily market-like. Instead, they are
immersed in the social and cultural institutions of the respective so-
cieties (Gibson-Graham, 2008; Morris, 2011; Morris and Polese, 2015;
Williams, 2004). While informal transport literature has, until now,
largely disregarded these existing approaches to informal economic
practices, and has barely addressed the complex relations alongside the
formal-informal spectrum and the reasons behind the spread of in-
formal practices, the informality literature is now in its fourth or fifth
decade of theorising on such questions.
Four important schools of thought have shaped the thinking on
informality since the coining of the concept by anthropologist Keith
Hart in the early 1970s (Hart, 1973). The first, dualist/modernisation
perspective on informality viewed the informal economy as a separate
and marginal sector, comprised of small-scale subsistence activities, in
contrast to a formal market economy. In the following decades, this
approach was critically appreciated, up to the point that the notion of
the ‘informal sector’ was replaced in favour of ‘informal economy’, in
acknowledgment of the close interconnectedness of formal and in-
formal economic exchanges (Guha-Khasnobis et al., 2006).
In the late 1980s and 1990s, the structuralist and the legalist/in-
stitutionalist perspectives started conceptualising informality. Both
perspectives emphasized the interconnectedness of formal and informal
economies, but approached the issue from very different theoretical
starting points. The structuralists saw the spread of informality, as no
longer confined to marginal actors and spaces, but affecting core in-
dustries in advanced capitalist economies (Portes et al., 1989; Slavnic,
2010). The dawn of neoliberalism, subsequent processes of de-regula-
tion, and worldwide liberalisation of capital mobility intensified com-
petitive pressures on firms. These, in turn, tried to cut down labour
costs through strategies of sub-contracting, outsourcing, and evasion of
labour protection legislation. In contrast to the structuralists, the leg-
alist/institutionalists current, assumed that the reason behind the
spread of informality was a lacking formal institutionalisation of mar-
kets (De Soto, 1989; North, 1995). The informal transport literature
comes close to this perspective, believing that informal practices are
already market-like. However, even such liberal readers of informality
as the legalist/institutionalists, unlike informal transport scholars, ac-
knowledged the important role of states in establishing and enforcing
market-supporting institutions, security of private property and rule of
law.
The grand theories gave way to a fourth perspective: the post-
structuralist writings on informality since the late 1990s/early 2000s.
These writings offer interpretative readings of informal economic
practices, forming a ‘diverse economies’ school of thought (Cameron
and Gibson, 2005; Gibson-Graham, 2008; Gibson et al., 2010). This
literature apprehends and underlines the non-capitalist character of
informal economic practices (Gibson-Graham, 2006; Routh, 2011;
4
Journal of Transport Geography xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
Stenning et al., 2010) and underlines the relational character of in-
formality (Sassen, 1997). Moreover, it strives to deconstruct the nega-
tive prejudices associated with the informal economy, and proposes
that a diversity of economic practices can inform our thinking on al-
ternative modes of production (Williams and Onoschenko, 2014). One
of the key recent contributions of informality literature has been its
introduction of the concept of social embeddedness. Suggesting that
economic exchanges are “embedded in concrete, ongoing systems of
social relations” (Granovetter, 1985, p. 487), scholars show that in-
formality is not reducible either to survival or to profit-seeking, but
instead is shaped by historically and culturally contingent, as well as
newly emerging, shared norms and understandings (Morris and Polese,
2014, 2015; Rodgers and Williams, 2009; Smith and Rochovská, 2007).
While the informality literature has come a long way in under-
mining the assumption of the market-likeness of informal practices, the
existing prevalent definition of social embeddedness faces a significant
challenge. This mainly refers to the concept's inability to capture
marketisation and social embedding as processes rather than static
conditions. The existing definition of embeddedness in informality lit-
erature is borrowed from new economic sociology, primarily from
Granovetter, which proposes that no economic action is entirely de-
personalised and dis-embedded. Hence, any economy, at any time, is
both market-like (to a degree), and socially embedded (Granovetter,
1985).
Depicting all economies as socially embedded creates two chal-
lenges for thinking of informality, markets and embeddedness. First, if
all economic action is embedded, then the embeddedness of informal
economic practices seems to be no novelty, and the relevance of a
formal-informal distinction disappears. Second, and perhaps more im-
portantly, if we do not draw a line between economic exchanges that
are governed by market logic and those that are not, lumping all of
them together, then the omnipresence of markets is rather reinforced.
If, for example, a taxi sector in which labour relations are regulated by
the state and a ride-sourcing sector where labour relations are informal
are both assumed to be similarly socially embedded by default, then
how do we account for divergent labour conditions?
4. A Polanyian framework for studying informality, markets and
social embeddedness
In order to overcome the static description of social-economic life,
be it formal or informal, as simultaneously market-like and socially
embedded, we elaborate upon a Polanyian institutionalist perspective.
In contrast to existing dominant approaches, it sees neither markets nor
social embeddedness as natural, static or given. Rather, both markets
and social embeddedness are conceived as purposefully constructed by
state and non-state actors. From a Polanyian perspective, markets and
social embeddedness can indeed co-exist. This approach stands in
contrast to both the formalist perspective, which assumes the omni-
presence of markets, and the new economic sociology, which assumes
the omnipresence of social embeddedness. Instead, it suggests first that
the relationship between market and embeddedness is far from har-
monious and stable, but rather conflictual and tension-ridden, and
second, that the balance between the two is continuously changing and
producing divergent consequences and implications for social-economic
life (Bohle and Greskovits, 2009, 2012; Dalton, 1968; Polanyi, 1957).
In order to explicate the Polanyian perspective on markets and
embeddedness and the role of informality in such a framework, a little
theoretical detour is necessary. Polanyi distinguishes between different
types of social-economic organisation, that is market, reciprocal, re-
distributive and household economies. Relying on historical and an-
thropological material, he demonstrates that prior to the emergence of
capitalism, most economies were operating on the principles of re-
ciprocity, redistribution and the household. Such modes of social in-
tegration are socially embedded, that is, subjected to the social-political
and cultural institutions of various societies. A market economy, in
L. Rekhviashvili, W. Sgibnev
turn, is the only mode of social-economic integration which dis-embeds
economy and subjects it to a self-regulating demand and supply prin-
ciple. The uniqueness of a market economy resides in the fact that
beyond exchanging commodities produced for sale, fictitious com-
modities (that is, resources not produced for sale such as land, labour
and money) are being commodified, and thus subjected to being sold on
demand- and supply-driven markets. The creation of conditions to
commodify such productive resources is far from spontaneous or nat-
ural. A purposeful institutionalisation of market economies by the state,
and an enforcement of private property rights enables the marketisation
process (Polanyi, 1957, 1968).
Social embedding, much like marketisation, is not a default and
omnipresent condition. The need for re-embedding stems from the so-
cial and ecological consequences of marketisation. Marketisation ad-
vances at the expense of dismantling pre-existing social and cultural
institutions. To understand the costs of such dismantling, there is no
need to idealise or romanticise pre-existing embedded institutions,
which historically might have been egalitarian or repressive. The social
cost of marketisation is nevertheless significant, as markets fail to
provide what embedded economies, as a tendency, are able to – social
safety and protection. Then, an attempt of re-embedding markets is
rather a response to the risks and insecurities imposed by marketisation.
Importantly, however, re-embedding can constrain markets to the de-
gree that they lose efficiency, again threatening social reproduction.
Polanyi calls this tension between marketization and embedding pro-
cesses a ‘double movement’ (Polanyi, 1957). Marketisation imposes
social costs, while re-embedding imposes economic costs, unless, of
course, there is a formally institutionalised political-economic system
other than a market economy in place.3
In what follows, we develop the Polanyian theory on markets and
embeddedness, include informality in the theoretical framework, and
draw implications for informal transport and urban mobility research.
First, given that establishing a market economy requires third-party
enforcement (be it the state or some other sub-or supranational political
entity), it is highly doubtful that informal markets can function as
laissez-faire markets. Instead of being entirely dependent on the de-
mand and supply principle, informal markets can be subjected to social-
cultural norms and institutions. Therefore, academic research cannot
assume market-likeness of informal economic exchange, but rather
empirically investigate which norms regulate such exchange. Second, in
the context of formalised or institutionalised markets, the need for re-
embedding will emerge due to the aforementioned social costs of
marketisation. This re-embedding can take a formal or an informal
character, which we respectively name as vertical (state-based) and
horizontal (informal) embedding. On the one hand, the state (or an-
other political entity) can vertically embed – regulating markets to pro-
tect productive resources by enforcing labour regulations and con-
straining the commodification of resources. On the other hand, in the
absence of state-based embedding, horizontal re-embedding can take
place by drawing either on pre-existing or newly elaborated norms and
institutions that counterbalance marketisation's risks and insecurities.
Much like marketisation, re-embedding is a process; it requires collec-
tive efforts and mobilisation on different scales. Third, as markets de-
pend on dismantling embedding institutions, and socially embedding
institutions depend on constraining markets, the progression of one can
enable the informalisation of the other. In a context where both market
supporting and socially embedding institutions are present, the pro-
gression of marketisation will inevitably mean the demise of social
regulations (for example, in the form of informalised labour relations),
as often articulated by a structuralist reading of informality (Slavnic,
2010). In turn, excessive regulation can also lead to the emergence of
informal markets, a process often emphasized by a legalist/
3
Socialist systems including the Soviet Union, with largely redistributive,
subsistence-provisioning economies, can be seen as such.
5
Journal of Transport Geography xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
institutionalist take on informality (De Soto, 2000).
Based on an extended Polanyian framework, we can propose a
number of possible ideal-type scenarios on the interplay between in-
formality, markets, and embeddedness (see Table 1). In the first sce-
nario, both markets and socially embedded forms of social integration
(be it household, reciprocal or redistributive) operate informally. In the
second scenario, markets are institutionalised by the state, leading to
the emergence of a market economy. This, according to Polanyi, will
cause the dismantling of previous social embedded institutions, which
will reconfigure themselves or new informal practices and institutions
can emerge to re-embed the economy and address the risks and social
insecurities imposed by marketisation. In the third scenario, social
embedding is institutionalised by public authorities in the form of state-
based, vertical regulation and protection. In the fourth scenario, reg-
ulation leads to the emergence of informal markets that subvert existing
social norms. Each scenario can have its own transitory and temporary
grey zones, where formal marketisation is not yet re-embedded for-
mally or informally, or where formalised reciprocal or redistributive
systems leave little space for formal or informal markets.
Indeed, we need to dwell on the limits and possible distortions of
such an exercise. Clearly, empirical realities in different circumstances
(Table 2) can and will be more complicated than accounted for in an
ideal type scenario. Each dimension of categorisation has its own
spectrum, and its own context-based diversity. While these categorisa-
tions might enable broad, cross-space mapping of configurations of
informality over time, markets and embeddedness, degrees and forms of
the phenomena will not be reducible to the parsimonious scheme.
With these limitations in mind, the contribution of the proposed
framework is twofold. The first one is conceptual, with major metho-
dological implications for the research of informal transport in parti-
cular and informal economic practices in general. This approach en-
ables an analytical decoupling of markets and informality (which are
often equated in existing writings on informal transport), and in some
cases, on informal economic practices in a broad sense. It also enables
the decoupling of social embeddedness between vertical (state-en-
forced) embedding and horizontal (informal) embedding. This shar-
pened conceptual toolkit requires alternative methodological ap-
proaches to studying informality. It emphasises the continual need for
empirical verification of the presence/absence of markets and em-
beddedness, rather than assuming by default the presence of markets or
embeddedness when encountering informality. The inverse is also true:
detailed empirical investigation is due when encountering formalised
markets to learn whether, informally, non-market norms and institu-
tions exist, or even prevail.
Secondly, the proposed framework offers a theoretical contribution,
primarily by identifying causal connections between markets and em-
bedded forms of social-economic orders, and formal and informal re-
embedding processes. The major theoretical contribution proposed here
is the articulation of a tension between markets and social embedded-
ness, the propensity of each to marginalise, and ultimately informalise
the other. A thorough verification of this theoretical proposition using
the example of flexible paratransit is far beyond the scope of this article.
However, given numerous successful applications of a Polanyian-in-
spired framework in the fields of anthropology (Burawoy, 1999, 2010;
Hann and Hart, 2009), human geography (Peck, 2013), and political
economy (Bohle and Greskovits, 2009, 2012; Streeck, 2011), these
theoretical propositions deserve serious consideration in further em-
pirical investigations. In what follows, we briefly demonstrate the re-
levance of the proposed framework on empirical examples from the
post-Soviet marshrutka mobility phenomenon.
5. Post-Soviet marshrutkas
The emergence and transformation of marshrutkas in Tbilisi and
Bishkek illustrates the limits of a formalist definition of informal
transport, and the merits of a more complex and refined framework.
L. Rekhviashvili, W. Sgibnev
Table 1
Ideal type configurations of informality, markets, and embeddedness.
Table 2
Locating the case studies in the ideal-type raster.
The Soviet public transport system in itself can be seen as a type of
socially embedded, state-run system that drew on the redistributive
Soviet economy. Transport allocation was decided according to cen-
trally determined mobility needs. Given the prevalence of informal
markets of services and commodities throughout the Soviet period
(Ledeneva, 2006; Mars and Altman, 1983), marginal levels of informal
provisioning of mobility services were present even prior to the collapse
of the Union. In the early 1990s, marshrutkas in both cities operated de
jure within, but de facto largely outside of the regulatory framework,
and were assumed to be an example of bottom-up market-like en-
trepreneurship. However, if one looks at this process from a Polanyian
framework, the notion of informally-operating marshrutkas being
market-like easily dissolves. In both Georgia and Kyrgyzstan in the
early 1990s, some very basic preconditions of market economy were
6
Journal of Transport Geography xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
put in place, such as the institution of private property. However, these
basics do not amount to the creation of a market economy if the state is
incapable of enforcing property rights and other contractual relations
(Bohle and Greskovits, 2012; North, 1995). The redistributive economy
collapsed, but instead of free laissez-faire markets, the countries wit-
nessed the emergence of informal markets tightly interwoven with pre-
existing and evolving informal networks and institutions (Morris,
2011).
If we applied the reductionist definition of informality prevalent in
informal transport literature, marshrutkas, privately owned for-profit
small buses, could be seen as market-like. That would imply the eco-
nomic exchange to be defined by demand and supply of free profit-
seeking individuals, not mediated by non-economistic social con-
siderations. If we apply a Polanyian framework and empirically ex-
amine different aspects and levels of economic exchanges in the sector,
the significance of personalised, non-economistic considerations, or
social embeddedness becomes apparent. First, the relationships be-
tween drivers and passengers were mediated by a range of non-econ-
omistic considerations. Drivers often served their own residential
neighbourhoods, or developed relationships with passengers over time.
This implied a negotiability of prices and types of services based on
personal connections, as well as broader social considerations such as
waiving or reducing fees for needier passengers. Relations between
drivers and vehicle or route owners were also mediated by informal
norms and institutions, with kinship and friendship networks affecting
access to jobs. The relationship among owners was hardly market-like
either. The ownership rights to vehicles, as well as ownership of newly
established routes, were rather inconsistent and usually reliant on the
enactment of informal institutions. In Tbilisi, the rights to route own-
ership or operation were not legally assigned by the state. Thus, mafia-
like groupings, the so-called ‘thieves in law’ (Slade, 2012), ensured
owners' rights informally, and settled conflicting ownership claims.
Finally, the relationships between route operators and the state were
personalised, and dependent on a delicate interconnectedness and
overlapping of criminal and political circles. In this period, marshrutkas
in both cities were operating as informal markets and were informally
embedded.
By the mid-to-late 1990s, both Georgia and Kyrgyzstan began
creating a more formalised framework to institutionalise the quickly
growing marshrutka sector (Finn, 2012). The enactment of the Pola-
nyian distinction between market-supporting and market-constraining
institutions is once more important. Local governments in both coun-
tries attempted to formalise informal markets by initiating competitive
tendering for access rights to marshrutka routes, coupled with licensing
and taxation. Public authorities were not concerned with labour rela-
tions, working conditions or the environmental impacts of the sector.
The only regulation imposed that can be seen as social embedding was
the Bishkek city authorities' insistence on affordable transit fares. In-
terestingly, the institutionalisation of market-supporting conditions
such as tendering took place with the support and pressure of inter-
national organisations (Gwilliam, 2001). This is no surprise given the
drive towards privatisation of urban transport in the cities of the Global
South fostered by the World Bank and other globalised institutions
(Rizzo, 2002). To put it another way, steps towards the in-
stitutionalisation of markets were not spontaneous, but rather based on
a transnational knowledge transfer aimed at enabling the transforma-
tion of former Soviet republics into functioning market economies.
If we were to apply a thin formalist definition of informal transport,
marshrutkas would now appear as formal, market-based, private
transport service providers. However, neither formality nor market-
likeness stand up to the empirical proof of the complexity of licensing
and tendering arrangements. To this day in Bishkek, tendering and li-
censing processes are rather fictitious, masking the informal distribu-
tion of political loyalties and rent-collection practices. Virtually no
drivers are denied licences, while the assignment or renewal of licences
is often ensured through the payment of bribes. As for access to routes,
L. Rekhviashvili, W. Sgibnev
this is formally based on competitive route tenders for 3 to 5 year terms.
Officially, the city government leases routes for free, and the best and
most experienced operating companies are supposedly selected. In
practice, however, 43 operating companies own access to 118 routes.
During tendering periods, they are expected to pay informal contribu-
tions to ensure their access to the routes (which in turn are collected
from drivers). Yet informal rents alone would not suffice: operating
companies are expected to have so-called ‘roofs’ (krysha) – that is,
political patrons enabling their access to the routes. In other words, it is
a political and often clan-based competition, rather than a market-
based one, which shapes Bishkek's marshrutka sector. Despite the
process of professionalisation and de-personalisation since the 1990s,
marshrutka services remain socially embedded, retaining vast informal
negotiation space between drivers, passengers, companies, and state
bureaucracy.
Tbilisi marshrutkas operated similarly to Bishkek prior to
2011–2012. Despite a formal tendering of routes, informal entitlements
and means of enforcing rights over routes prevailed. Complex and
convoluted class and property relations shaped the drivers' working
conditions. Route owners sub-rented route access to vehicle owners,
who, in turn, rented vehicles to drivers. In some cases, drivers would
further sub-rent vehicles which they did not own. Such drivers, oper-
ating sub-rented vehicles, were called ‘slaves of slaves’, denoting their
extreme precariousness and powerlessness. Another vivid signifier of
the lack of marketisation is the sustained multiplicity of actors, pri-
marily of operating companies, denoting the lack of a firm consolida-
tion tendency. In summary, despite superficial formalisation attempts,
Bishkek today and Tbilisi until 2012 may be classified as informal
markets, all while retaining their informal embeddedness.
Tbilisi's marshrutka sector experienced full-fledged marketisation in
2011–2012. The city government announced a tender which required
operating companies to enter the market with an entirely new vehicle
fleet, and in turn promised an exclusive and extended 20-year franchise.
These criteria forced out the previously prevalent small operators and
enabled the entry of large investors. Four of the winning enterprises
established a united managerial company, called ‘Tbilisi Microbus’.
They purchased up to 2500 new vehicles and set up a centralised co-
ordination structure for the sector. This clarified property and access
rights virtually overnight, and made them easily enforceable by the
state, removing the need for involvement of non-state extra-legal actors.
This also de-personalised the relations between the operating company
and drivers, and established formal contractual relations between them.
The standardisation of the fleet, alongside new tools of managerial
control (including GPS tracking) substantially de-personalised driver-
passenger relations, reduced the leeway to negotiate fares, and most
importantly, ruled out the previous practice of flexibly manoeuvring
routes upon passengers' request. This essentially marked the dis-em-
bedding of marshrutkas at different levels of economic exchange, and
the consolidation of the sector into the hands of a clearly identifiable
and taxable private profit-seeking company.
The formalisation of the once-informal marshrutka sector did not
involve the simultaneous institutionalisation of social embeddedness,
and it drew on exploiting a legally unprotected labour force. The di-
verse body of transport workers, which in some cases included former
vehicle or route owners, transformed into a body of drivers leasing
vehicles from the company. The drivers' incomes now depend entirely
on their work for the managerial company, all while they own neither
shares in the company nor even the vehicles they operate. Nevertheless,
they are contracted as ‘self-employed entrepreneurs’. This allows the
company to duck away from employment regulations and social con-
tributions (mostly income tax) as well as from vehicle insurance and
maintenance, which are being socialised onto drivers. However, the
Tbilisi Microbus company did not fully disturb one key set of relations:
the drivers' informal social safety net. By the time of its entry into the
sector, the company allowed pre-existing transport workers' collectives
to remain in their previous work locations. At present, collectives of ten
7
Journal of Transport Geography xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
to thirty drivers continue pooling and sharing resources (be it labour,
money, or property) to cope with vehicle maintenance costs, share the
burden of unexpected accidents, build and equip shelters at terminal
stations, and also to support each other in more personal, family-related
matters. Even if drivers lease the vehicles, the company sometimes in-
formally allows them to use vehicles for personal purposes off-duty, like
driving to funerals or weddings of the driver's family and kin.
Feeding back into our theoretical framework, the Tbilisi marshrutka
sector experienced formal marketisation but remains, to a degree, in-
formally embedded. It is worth noting that in both the cases of the city
government and the managerial company, the persistence of informal
networks can come in handy: in the absence of formalised social pro-
tection, drivers themselves informally team up to handle risks and in-
securities. In this sense, markets do not simply co-exist with informal
embedding but draw on it as a resource, owing their very survival to
informal embeddedness as it reproduces labour – in this case the key
resource for the functioning of the sector. Furthermore, markets are also
indebted to inexistent or limited formal protections: they reproduce and
draw profits at the expense of the severe exploitation of labour and
environment.
6. Discussion and implications
As this article demonstrates, even if the formal-informal divide is
not clear-cut, informality still retains its importance in studying urban
transport in the Global South and North. First, the (non-)usage of the
concept of informality shapes methodological choices. Informality re-
mains a key entry point for observing exchange rules, the circulation of
resources, and power dynamics beyond the observation of formal and
institutionalised rules and practices. Secondly, informality is analyti-
cally important for signifying a lack of vertical embeddedness, or the
lack of state involvement in regulating social-economic relations.
However, if the concept is to maintain its methodological and analytical
importance, we need to move beyond reductionist and formalist read-
ings of informality. This is what this article has attempted to do, sug-
gesting building upon a Polanyian perspective to understand in-
formality, markets and embeddedness.
Reading marshrutkas in a substantivist manner reveals a very dif-
ferent picture then a formalist perspective would allow. For one, in-
formal markets do not function like laissez-faire markets, as the existing
informal transport literature would assume. Moreover, as the Tbilisi
case shows, even institutionalised markets can be informally embedded.
The goal of drawing a more nuanced picture of informal transport is not
only to reveal empirical complexity. Altering the conceptual lenses
through which we see informal transport, or urban transport in general,
has further implications. This empirical nuance, or the lack thereof,
defines what kind of theoretical arguments and causal links are being
inferred. Moreover, theoretical generalisations define what lessons are
learned from the research, and which policy solutions are suggested.
Numerous scholars have suggested learning from the informal
transport experience to make public transit more flexible and efficient
elsewhere (Cervero, 2000; Finn, 2012; Neumann, 2014). Such cross-
learning propositions stress the demand-responsiveness of transport
operating within market-based competition. In sharp contrast to this
account, an analysis of the marshrutka sector from a Polanyian lens
articulates the role of social (dis)embeddedness, and thus radically al-
ters basic theoretical assumptions about informal transport. The de-
mand-responsiveness of marshrutkas comes not from the operation of
the invisible hand, but from their very visible and tangible local social
embeddedness. Moreover, the reproduction of the sector depends on
exploitation and self-exploitation of transport workers. In both Bishkek
and Tbilisi, local and national governments attempt to formalise
marshrutkas as businesses, but avoid formalising labour relations. In
such a context, informal horizontal social embeddedness serves as the
only venue for enabling the reproduction of worker's livelihoods, and as
a way to cope with market-related risks and insecurities.
L. Rekhviashvili, W. Sgibnev
In past few years, digitally empowered ride-sourcing companies are
transforming informal sharing mobility practices in the region. App-
based taxi services such as Taxify, Maxim, or Yandex Taxi, are entering
the market with so far unclear consequences for mobility provision and
employment relations. The proliferation of app-based mobility options
in contexts where formal labour protection is almost inexistent could
possibly undermine even the informal social embeddedness. If the
marshrutka and the pre-existing taxi sector's informal embeddedness is
enabled by the solidarisation of transport workers and their attachment
to specific locations, ride-sourcing companies could undermine drivers'
capacity to collectively mobilise – along the same line as we have seen
in the Global North where ride-sourcing companies attempt to prevent
the collective mobilisations of drivers (Hawkins, 2017).
Indeed, thinking of new ride-sourcing companies from a Polanyian
perspective also alters the prevalent picture of this emerging and
quickly expanding sector. Such companies build their business on the
avoidance of pre-existing social regulations (of the taxi sector, for in-
stance), and the informalisation of labour relations. Contrary to
marshrutkas, however, it is doubtful whether the sector enables hor-
izontal informal embeddedness, while undermining formal socially
embedding institutions. In this case, the expansion of markets generates
an informalisation of labour relations, but impedes local informal la-
bour protection, given the de-territorialised and impersonal recruit-
ment strategies and digitally fuelled modes of operation (Rekhviashvili
and Sgibnev, 2018a,b). Unlike existing readings, a Polanyian stance
would see such informalisation of labour relations not as a sad side-
effect, but as a consequence and direct enabler of the sector's fast ex-
pansion. Learning from informal transport is vital here as well, but in
terms of acknowledging the structural precariousness of the labour
force in the absence of social regulations which come to counterbalance
marketisation (Rizzo, 2011; Spooner, 2011).
Acknowledgements
We are immensely grateful to Professor Bela Greskovits for his ex-
tensive support, feedback and insights while elaborating the theoretical
linkages between marketisation, social embeddedness and informality.
We thank the Volkswagen Foundation for providing generous funding
(project number 89 816) for the research project “Fluid mobilities for
cities in transformation: spatial dynamics of marshrutkas in Central
Asia and the Caucasus” at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography.
We also extend our thanks the anonymous reviewers for providing in-
sightful feedback to an early draft of this paper.
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