IDPR, 40 (4) 2018  https://doi.org/10.3828/idpr.2018.

23

Anthony Boanada-Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

Towards a taxonomic understanding

of informality

The discussion on informality has become considerably more complex since its inception in development
planning in the early 1970s. Independent discourses exist on the informal economy, informal housing,
informal planning practices, informal land management, legal informality and informal institutions.
Although these discussions have directly informed development policies, they have remained fragmented
and narrowly focused. This is unfortunate, as the complex interplay of formal-informal practices requires
a more comprehensive understanding to become useful development policy targets. In order to break
with the initial pathologies of subject fragmentation inherited from past sector-based approaches, the
authors propose a cross-sector investigation. A selective literature review was carried out for academic
discourses relevant to urban development scholars. The authors developed a visual tool, a taxonomic
table to capture and systematise thematic dimensions and associated meanings of informality, as well as
its relation to formality. This taxonomy may serve as a communicative interface between different schools
of thought and structure more comprehensive and interdisciplinary research agendas. For scholars, the
relevance of the study lies in the proposed use of bibliometrics and the taxonomic table to encourage
mutual learning experiences. For praxis, by highlighting the different elements within the conceptuali-
sation of informality, the taxonomy can be used to tackle ‘the informal’ by improving communication
across sectors, including often excluded voices and different on-the-ground understandings of the same
phenomena.

Keywords: informal economy, informal housing, informal land tenure, urban informality, development
planning, taxonomy

Introduction
Old habits die hard – the same can be said for popular academic theories and concepts.
The discussion on informality introduced almost 50 years ago has often been criticised
and declared dead but remains persistently in use in both academia and practice
(Peattie, 1987; Maloney, 2004; Kanbur, 2011). International Development Planning Review
(IDPR) alone has published 35 articles containing the word ‘informal’ in the title (the
first publication dates back to 1988 and the most recent one was published in the last
issue of 2017). The top two of IDPR’s five most read articles fall into this category
(as of May 2018). The popularity of the concept is simultaneously its greatest short-
coming. ‘Informality’ is a rather intuitive and mouldable idea that can be adapted

Anthony Boanada-Fuchs is Project Manager and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs is Director at the St. Gallen Institute
of Management in Latin America (GIMLA), Avenida Paulista 1754, 01.310-920 Sao Paulo, Brazil; e-mail: anthony.
boanada-fuchs@unisg.ch; vanessa.boanada@unisg.ch
398 Anthony Boanada-Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

to various contexts, research objects and ideologies (Peattie, 1987). Informality was
coined as a concept in the developing world, being initially perceived as an essential
definitional characteristic of the under-developed or ‘third’ world; from there, the
concept was analytically exported to the global North, which ‘discovered’ informality
for itself. Today, the concept is intimately linked to the realm of world development,
responding to claims of decolonisation and knowledge emancipation from the global
South.
The enlarged geographic adoption of the concept was paralleled by a broadening
of its meaning and the diversification of academic debates around it. On the one
hand, the multiple uses of ‘informality’ in different discourses and contexts speak
for its global character and an emancipatory perspective that reveals the influences
and theoretical contributions made by the South to debates in the North. On the
other hand, it reflects a cacophony of ‘informality’ concepts, parallel discourses with
arguments partly running past each other and often based on opposing ideas. In view
of the relative lack of precise definitions (with the exception of informal economy), it
is difficult to compare different discourses as much of the discussion seems to be based
on a rather mysterious understanding of what informality consists of.
There are spaces and practices that escape the expansion of modernity and its
increasingly codified system of institutions. Next to the so-called ‘formal structures’ of
modernity that aim at regulating human behaviour (the state, market, organisational
and knowledge structures, etc.) parallel realities of non-conformity co-exist that escape,
or attempt to remain outside the reach of, formal institutions. It is this rich world that
has been approached several times from different thematic angles as the ‘informal’ (for
an overview, see Keivani and Werna, 2001a; Maloney, 2004; Roy, 2009a).
There are several highly relevant but separate discussions on informality such as
the discourse on the informal economy, informal housing solutions, land manage-
ment systems and urban planning practices.1 Each topic has been addressed from a
different thematic and often disciplinary angle highlighting distinct aspects of infor-
mality. The question arises: are these discourses compatible i.e. are proponents of
the different discourses talking about the same thing or do their understandings of
‘informality’ differ fundamentally? There are several visible efforts that aim at closing
the gaps between discourses and work towards a new definition (Al Sayyad, 2004;
Godfrey, 2011; Altrock, 2012). The impact of these approaches is limited due to the
still fragmented nature of scholarship.
This article proposes a different approach: instead of enriching the discourse with
a more comprehensive definition aimed at uniting the different discourses, the authors
argue in favour of an analytical step backwards. We propose to have a closer look at
1 The concept of informality has also been used in management, organisational, educational and legal studies. By
considering the target audience of the journal and for the sake of brevity, we decided to exclude the discourse on
informal institutions, informal learning and legal pluralism.
Towards a taxonomic understanding of informality 399

the existing literature and analyse the uses and meanings attributed to the concept
of informality in each context. The advantage of such an approach is to allow us to
identify all aspects other scholars deemed important enough to discuss in the context
of informality within their academic work. Our hypothesis is that despite the diversity
of approaches, a look across discourses can help to identify similarities and dissimilari-
ties on the level of conceptualisation (for a comparable approach, see Godfrey, 2011).
In acknowledging the diversity and complexity of historical and ongoing discussions
on informality, scholars can work towards interdisciplinary cooperation which better
responds to the complexities of our lived realities.
By carefully analysing the meanings given to the concept and the relationships
established between formality and informality, our taxonomy systemises its multi-
dimensional characteristics. Such an analytical toolbox is helpful to assist scholars in
finding a transversal understanding that connects different fields of work, from which
interdisciplinary investigations can be developed. In addition, the taxonomy can also
be applied in more practical terms, charting different elements of informality which
development practitioners can make reference to in order to design cross-sectoral
policies, including the perspective of multiple stakeholders and hopefully triggering
positive change in complex world development issues.
This article is structured into four sections. The first reviews the literature on
informality with relevance to urban development and provides a short outline of
each academic discourse, starting with the oldest discourses on informal economy
and informal housing, moving towards the more recent discussions on informal land
tenure and informal urban planning. In the second section, the applied research
design is explained by detailing our selection of academic references, the analytical
tools used to classify them and the logic of the proposed taxonomy. The third section
highlights differences and commonalities in the way the relations between formality
and informality have been conceptualised and different characteristics ascribed to
the concept of informality. The result section discusses the findings of this study and
the potential practical uses of the taxonomic table. Potential learning experiences
between different discourses are addressed and future steps laid out towards a trans-
versal understanding for interdisciplinary research and inclusive, participative and
cross-sector policy making.

Different discourses on informality

The concept of informality is used in several distinct discourses, all with a common
knowledge base but distinct development paths. In order to better situate the analyt-
ical part of this article, we provide concise overviews of the different informality
discourses. One by one, we outline the academic debate on economy, housing, land
management and urban planning.
400 Anthony Boanada-Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

Informality in the economic discourse

The term informal economy was coined by Keith Hart, a British economic anthro-
pologist in the 1970s. In his study on structural underemployment in Accra, Ghana,
Hart described the creative answers of the urban population to ensure life subsist-
ence and beyond (Hart, 1973). His work stands in the line of a dual conception of the
world economy (see Boeke, 1942; Lewis, 1954) and triggered considerable research
through its adaptation by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the Kenya
Mission Report on informality (ILO, 1972). Today, the informal economy (also termed
informal sector) is not only the oldest but also the best-studied dimension of infor-
mality.2 While the discourse still faces the difficulties in quantifying and defining infor-
mality (Chen, 2006), there is broad consensus about its growing importance in recent
decades. Economic informality is the major generator of new employment in the
developing world, even if accompanied by high levels of underemployment, insecu-
rity and low-income level (for recent estimates, see Vanek et al., 2014). The informal
sector accounts for up to 80 per cent of certain national economies in the developing
world, but also amounts to 8–10 per cent in Western Europe and the United States
(Portes and Schauffler, 1993; Becker, 2004).
Two broad explanations for the existence and persistence of informality are put
forward. Both share a common tendency to equate the informal economy with illegality
and poverty (Berner, 2001; Gilbert, 1990). In a structuralist interpretation, informality
is perceived as a consequence of an uneven capitalistic development and ‘bad’ for the
economy and the state (Kanbur, 2011). The second, legalist school of thought, empha-
sises the competitive advantages of informality such as self-employment and flexible
labour safety rules compliance (for an overview, see Rakowski, 1994). Informality is seen
as a rational response to (over)regulation. In such light, informality is often equated with
the activities of creative and self-employed urban poor whose potential is primarily
curtailed by a lack of access to financial resources. Hernando de Soto describes the
‘informals’ as ‘plucky entrepreneurs making a major contribution to the national
economy’ (Bromley, 1990, 331). The argument put forward is that informality should not
be suppressed but rather unlocked by regularising the ‘dead capital’ of informal goods
and real-estate assets through large-scale legalisation campaigns (de Soto, 2003). While
politically appealing, due to its potential economic benefit and links to poverty allevia-
tion, such an approach has been highly questioned for its actual effects on the lives of the
urban poor (Gilbert, 2002). This criticism has been particularly voiced by proponents
of the land management discourse (Berner, 2001; Durand-Lasserve and Royston, 2002),
who argue that rather than legal titles (de jure) tenure security (absence of the fear of
eviction) is needed, shifting the importance from laws to politics.

2 A Web of Science™ search showed that more than 2000 publications use ‘informal economy’ and ‘informal
sector’ in their title (March 2015).
Towards a taxonomic understanding of informality 401

The concept of the informal economy has undergone considerable development

with the common denominator of perceiving informality as activities that trans-
gress formal regulations. While the initial description of Hart was very rich in detail,
addressing political roots and cultural aspects, the adoption of the concept by inter-
national organisations is paralleled by a reduction of conceptual complexity to a mere
economic understanding (for an overview, see Peattie, 1987). From such an angle, three
different levels of informality may be distinguished: the avoidance of labour laws,
tax evasion and the non-respect of official norms and standards. The incentives for
economic activities to remain informal can be of a different nature – the majority of
informal workers and businesses have little other choice, but a distinguishable share
of informal entrepreneurs move to or remain in this sphere to benefit from competi-
tive advantages (ease of entry, reduced operational costs, no tax burden). Informal
economic activities are often flexible and small-scale with skills ‘often acquired outside
of formal education, labour-intensive methods of production and adapted technology’
(Portes and Schauffler, 1993). While it has been argued that there is no theoretical
justification to analytically exclude informal practices of the corporate sector (fraud,
corruption, etc.), these are rarely included in practice (Tokman, 1978; Slavnic, 2016).

Informality in the housing discourse

The relation between informality and housing is intimately connected to the idea of
self-help. This idea can be traced back to the early 1960s and the writings of John
Turner (1977), Charles Abrams (1966) and William Mangin (1967). John Turner, an
architect who is less the inventor than the promoter of the idea of self-help, took
interest in the shelter provision logic of the urban poor and carried out extensive field
research on squatter settlements in Peru (Harris, 2003). In his publications, Turner
(1977) describes the efficient and natural way rural-urban migrants meet their basic
housing needs by themselves. The concept of self-help refers to construction practices
that are irregular, avoid taxes and permits and are organised by the end-user. The
discourse perceives the formal and the informal as mutually exclusive. Whereas the
informal leans on traditional material and techniques related to family and subsist-
ence, the formal is equated with modernity led by formal institutions (the state, the
market). Turner (1977) argues that governments should refrain from oppressing and
destroying informal construction but acknowledge their valid contribution to solve
escalating housing shortages.
The idea of self-help directly informed the first generation of World Bank
supported housing programs such as sites and services and slum upgrading schemes. At
its Vancouver conference (1976), the UN-Habitat also endorsed a housing programme
based on the concept of self-help. In practice, such initiatives greatly lagged behind
expectations (Bredenoord and van Lindert, 2010), which partly reflects the limitations
402 Anthony Boanada-Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

of their theoretical basis. The concept of self-help concentrates on auto-construction

and its cost-saving potential without addressing causal links with small-scale produc-
tion, irregular status and aligning construction process to financial capacities. Most
projects had only a limited success as they attempted to formalise self-help,3 which
added bureaucratic obstacles resulting in time delay, escalating prices and the exten-
sion of market-based housing supply.
Later authors, following particularly the categorisation of Drakakis-Smith (1981),
contextualise building practices of self-help into a larger framework of informal
housing options (see for example Kombe and Kreibich, 2000). Such scholars also
broadened the concern to incorporate issues of tenure status, regulatory conformity
and the politics of land. With the broadening of concern, the definition of informality
surpasses the concept of self-help. However, over the last two decades, academic
attention on the topic of informal housing and self-help has been rather minimal
(Bredenoord and van Lindert, 2010) and the discourse largely dissolved into the urban
planning and land management literature.

Informality in the land tenure discourse

Discussions on land tenure systems in developing countries have heavily relied on
the concepts of formality and informality, while at the same time managing to break
with their dichotomous configuration. The discourse stresses the social dimension of
informality by perceiving it as an alternative institutional structure that guarantees
rights associated to land. In contrast to developed countries, where tenure is associ-
ated with written rights and property titles, in most parts of the global South tenure
remains a product of constant social relations and negotiations (Durand-Lasserve
and Selod, 2009). These tenure systems are products of extremely complex historical,
cultural and institutional processes (Bukhari, 1982; Al Sayyad, 1993; Payne, 2001).
Proponents of this discourse perceive the origin of informal tenure, on the one hand
as the natural (customary) status, and on the other hand as state-produced due to high
technical standards and regulatory frameworks, political inflexibility and failure of
adequate formal provision. The focal point of the land tenure discourse is to illustrate
the diversity of tenure agreements in absence of the state and legal titles. Unlike the
economic discussion around Hernando de Soto that focuses on de jure title (legal),
proponents of this discourse are more interested in de facto security. Informal insti-
tutions and actors, such as religion and beliefs, family and clan structures, but also
(informally acting) politicians and landlords, are of central importance in influencing
land tenure security around the world. In such a view, oppositions between formality

3 Sites and services were also following cost-recovery ideas in order to be replicable. Another reason for their
failure was the use of very remote land parcels, far from places of employment, services and often transportation
possibilities.
Towards a taxonomic understanding of informality 403

and informality are quickly abandoned in favour of an array of tenure arrangements

spanning from formal titles to degrees of informality involved in land subdivision and
squatted settlements (Kombe and Kreibich, 2000; Keivani and Werna, 2001a).
The land management discourse is interested in the mutual influences between
the formal and the informal spheres. Evidence points at an increasing superposition
between formal and informal logics e.g. informal land subdivisions adopting layouts
and institutions from the ‘formal’ city or the increasing replacement of reciprocal
and distributional exchanges by market-based transactions. With ongoing commodi-
fication, informal property markets seem to obey the same laws and principles of
any other market (Kombe and Kreibich, 2000, 239). Another form of formalisa-
tion consists of governmental attempts ‘by which informal tenure is integrated into
a system recognised by public authorities’ (Durand-Lasserve and Selod, 2009, 105).
Given this diversity, scholars have put forward a system of classifying the level of
informality based on the level of tenure security and the associated rights (Payne,
2002; Durand-Lasserve and Selod, 2009). The elaboration of degrees of formality/
informality, though limited in scope to tenure, is one of the most relevant contribu-
tions of this discourse to interdisciplinary discussions.

Informality in the (urban) planning discourse

Over the last ten years, informality has also become a concern for planning scholars
(Innes et al., 2007; Al Sayyad and Roy, 2004). Conceptually, the discussion is connected
to debates around housing studies in Latin America (Abrams, 1966; Turner, 1977;
Mangin, 1967) while distancing itself from the concept of economic informality as
promoted by the ILO (Al Sayyad, 2004). Emphasis, on the contrary, is given to the
political and socio-cultural dimensions of the informal. Such concerns emphasise the
active construction of informality by planning practices. While sharing the economic
legalist argument that formal regulations are the underlying cause of informality, this
discourse also highlights the ideologies and motivations involved in legal and regula-
tory practices. Informality is conceived as a direct product of the government that
voluntarily ignores (laissez-faire), erases (omission from city maps, slum destruction),
but also eventually supports and stimulates such activities. The aim of this scholarship
is to show the selective governmental tolerance towards different kinds of informality:
high-end development projects are tolerated and legitimised (a process described
by Oren Yiftachel as ‘the whitening of grey cities’) while informal settlements face
omission, repression or destruction (‘turning grey into black’, see Yiftachel, 2009).
The discourse on urban planning emphasises the connection between formality and
informality, which is mostly perceived as a directional one, in the sense that the formal
produces the informal. In most works, formality is thus seen as the raison d’etre of
informality. At the same time, formality is the stable point of reference. The discourse
404 Anthony Boanada-Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

relatively neglects the opposite direction, that is: how informal may influence or is
part of formal practices and how informality may be a differentiated reality in itself
(Al Sayyad, 2004).
A second and complementary viewpoint on informality has been developed to
describe informality as a form of collective opposition, whether as the passive (silent
encroachment of the ordinary; Bayat, 2000) or more open and active act of resist-
ance. This resistance may be of political nature (Roy, 2009b; 2011; McFarlane, 2012;
MacLeod and Jones, 2011) or a cultural expression based on a ‘new way of life’. Both,
nevertheless, give rise to alternative forms of urbanisation (Al Sayyad, 2004; Varley,
2013, 7ff). Informality from such a viewpoint is seen as anti-modern – not in a pejora-
tive way as in the ‘Culture of Poverty’ (Lewis, 1954) but as a hindrance to the expan-
sion of modern/Western institutional structures (Roy, 2005; Varley, 2013).
The four discourses outlined above show differences and commonalities in their
historic roots and the main ideas expressed by the literature when referring to infor-
mality. In the next section, we derive a taxonomy of informality. This is done on two
levels, first on the level of configuration: How does informality relates to formality?
And second, on the level of thematic dimensions: What are the elements that charac-
terise informality?

Research design, relevance and limitations

We used bibliometrics as the starting point for our methodology as we started our
research on the different meanings and applications of the concept of informality.
Bibliometrics is a set of well-established approaches to analyse the structure of
a knowledge field including its geographic distribution and inter-linked citation
patterns (Archambault and Gagné, 2004). Academic search engines can be used
to identify the most cited references (citation impact) within a knowledge field
based on a set of keywords. However, we soon found out that this kind of research
becomes less straightforward if the search topic includes debates from different
disciplines, as respective citation weights per discipline and other adjustments need
to be taken into account (Van Leeuwen, 2004, 386f). As our study aims at identifying
specific content-related aspects of scholarly articles across disciplines, this dimen-
sion could not be accurately captured solely through citation impacts. For these
reasons, we opted to adjust a bibliometric approach by contrasting it with selective
literature review. While such an approach is less systematic in terms of academic
reproducibility,4 it allowed us to select the relevant literature based on the length and
depth of the conceptual discussion at stake.

4 Nevertheless, we maximised the level of reproducibility by offering a great level of transparency in the workflow,
in particular the method of selection (Hammersley, 2006).
Towards a taxonomic understanding of informality 405

We launched the bibliometric search using the Web of Science™ for each discourse
on informality5 relevant to international development planning: economics, housing,
land tenure and urban planning. The top ten cited publications of each discourse were
screened for adequacy. We then ensured external verification and validation following
direct contact with key scholars (based on citation) from each of the above-mentioned
discourses. We requested them to identify three academic works that according to
them provided a definition of the informal.6 From this three-pronged approach, we
derived a total of 38 references which were used for an initial textual screening, and
ultimately selected a sample of 20 articles (considering the extent of the theoretical
discussion, the historic development and the representativeness of the concept within
specific disciplinary debates), producing an in-depth analysis of five references per
discourse.
The selected references were analysed with the following guiding research questions
in mind:
• What kind of relationships are established between informality and formality?
• What characteristics are associated with the term ‘informality’?

Constructing the taxonomic table: breaking down concepts

and relationships
In order to break down the concept of informality and its relationship with ‘formality’,
we analysed all selected academic articles underlining passages that made reference
to this relationship, extracting them into a table. By reducing the sample, as described
above, we were able to approach the textual analysis symmetrically, aiming at being
as comprehensive as possible and not reducing the involved discursive diversity.
Every nuanced meaning was extracted from the text in order to avoid eliminating
the depth and richness of the academic debate. For example, while ‘missing legal
recognition’, ‘unauthorised’ and ‘illegal’ are used oftentimes interchangeably with the
word ‘informal’ and could be seen as describing the same idea, we kept these distinct
nuances as part of the table, highlighting slightly different aspects of a legal status
when referring to an informal situation/object.
We did not engage in any qualification of terms or exclude any apparent contra-
diction. If a term was mentioned in its negated form, we marked it as ‘N’ (such as
informality being considered as bad versus good for the economy). Where contradic-
tory ideas are not entirely negations of each other, we kept the negative and positive
views, as presented by the scholars, and as separate subcategories in our own textual

5 On 12 April 2015, we searched the following key words: ‘informal economy’, ‘informal sector’, ‘informal housing’,
‘self-help housing’, ‘urban informality’, ‘informal land’ and ‘informal tenure’.
6 The authors were contacted in May 2015.
406 Anthony Boanada-Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

analysis.7 Finally, in cases where the meaning of ‘informality’ had not been made
explicit but could be inferred, we marked the description as ‘I’ (for implicit) in our
textual analysis. Qualitative research has inherent shortcomings in decision making
and research reproducibility, however, we attempted to analyse implicit meanings
with care, avoiding extrapolating from a broader writing style or reading between the
authors’ lines.8

Reading the taxonomic table: grouping different

characteristic elements of informality
The plethora of associated characteristics and relationships were coded and then
grouped into categories. The underlined terms that characterise informality were
grouped together according to their closeness of meaning, ultimately resulting in
the extraction of seven categories (economic, legal, technical, organisational, polit-
ical, social and cultural) and 112 characteristics. Furthermore, we discovered that all
mentioned relationships between informality and formality could be broken down
into two main constituting ideas: configuration and connection, each containing three
different sub-elements (negation, polarity and continuum; and no connections, direc-
tional influence and interconnections respectively).
The coding has been translated into a taxonomy of informality9 where the presence
and absence of each category can be visually traced. The figure provides a visual tool that
can be used to assist researchers and practitioners in identifying differences and common-
alities within specific informality discourses and disciplinary debates, or to verify which
elements of informality are tackled by a given project or policy (see Figure 2).

Analysing the taxonomic table: relation between

informality and formality
Philosophically and linguistically speaking, informality is a hetero-defined term i.e. it
gains its identity relationally in regards to its opposite. The in-formal is the negation
of the formal. In practice, the academic literature has largely ascribed distinct charac-
teristics to the informal and the formal, making them separate entities rather than
relational negations of each other.

7 As an example for a non-perfect opposition we can state two characteristics in the category of organisation:
‘lacking predefined structure’ and ‘being organised’ are very different ideas but not perfect oppositions of each
other’s meaning.
8 More practically speaking, the characteristic of complexity is only recorded if written out or rather specifically
referred to and not derived from the description of a complex process.
9 We would like to thank Nitin Bathla, PhD student at the ETH Zurich to have pointed us to McCandless (2012)
as a source of inspiration to illustrate the complex data.
Towards a taxonomic understanding of informality 407

In order to fully develop our arguments and avoid confusion stemming from the
inexact use of terms within the academic debate, we use three concepts, adding the
non-formal as an intermediary concept. When the informal is hetero-defined, it is
congruent with the non-formal (the negation of the formal). In all other cases, the
informal is a distinct entity encompassed by the non-formal.

Figure 1  The formal, non-formal and informal

Source: Illustration by the authors

Differentiating between (a) configuration and (b) connections, the relationship

between informality and formality can take several forms: relationships of negation,
polarity and continuum.
The idea of negation situates closest to the philosophic understanding of infor-
mality as being directly defined by its relational opposite aspect. The informal,
according to this perspective, is equated with the non-formal. This most intuitive
understanding is almost completely absent from the literature. We could only identify
a single reference dealing with this kind of configuration, as Leaf pointed out that
informality is ‘conceptualized in contradistinction to an opposite’ (1992, 132).
In contrast, the relation of polarities differ from negation by ascribing infor-
mality a distinct nature. In this view, the informal is not automatically shaped by
the formal but has its own characteristics. We may thus speak of a bi-polar/dualistic
configuration. This configuration has a long lineage and can be already identified in
Hart’s and Turner’s seminal works on the informal economy (‘inefficient’, ‘irregular’,
‘unrecorded’, Hart, 1973) and self-help housing (‘unorganised’, ‘uninsured’, ‘legally
unrecognized property’, Turner, 1977).
The use of the polarity concept has been criticised as an inconsistent and
non-rigorous approach, because only the concept of negation allows dissecting
empirical evidence and attributing it to one or the other reality (see for example
Leaf, 1992, 132). Indeed, conceptually speaking, the bi-polar idea faces the great
practical challenge of unambiguous antonymous characteristics, as to say assigning
each meaning to a single pole (such as black/white, large/small, effective/ineffec-
408 Anthony Boanada-Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

tive, etc.). The analysed academic works clearly reveal the practical limitations to this
conceptualisation: often non-opposing (and sometimes even similar) characteristics
are ascribed to each pole. This way, the conceptual illustration loses its referential
purpose. Despite its theoretical flaws, the bi-polar concept is by far the most dominant
form of describing the informal-formal relation. We identified direct references in
70 per cent of all analysed articles, four out of five within the discourses on informal
economy and urban planning.
Lastly, the idea of continuum has been brought forward partly as a response to
this limitation. The continuum proposes a more nuanced reading of the formal-
informal relationship by acknowledging overlaying realities. Perceiving formal and
informal as degrees in a scale has been developed early in the tenure discourse
(informal-formal distinction ‘must be conceived of as a continuum’, Leaf, 1992,
133), but also entered the discussions of urban planning (‘differentiation within
informality’, Roy, 2005, 149), and economics (enterprises can ‘be classified on a
continuum between the two extreme and opposite poles of formal and informal’,
Blunch et al., 2001, 8).
However, scholars who argue for breaking with binary oppositions generally
content themselves by pointing at the metaphor without attempting to precisely situate
a specific reality on the scale. In addition, strictly speaking, such degrees span more
within the zones of informality itself (from informal-informal to informal-formal)
than between the formal and informal (Roy, 2005, 149). This may be explained by the
fact that, within all discourses, the formal still remains the pole of reference. Such a
view is often combined with the idea of directional influence flowing from formal to
informal.
The second category of the taxonomy describes the interactions between formality
and informality. The theoretical conceptualisations of these interactions have ranged
from regarding them as separate entities with (little or) no connections, with a direc-
tional influence, or as interconnected counterparts.
In early works on economic informality, the formal/informal dichotomy was
described as two separate poles with no or marginal connections. It was very difficult
to find practical accounts of the idea of isolated entities in the analysed literature:
Innes et al. mention indirectly this idea by distinguishing between two fundamentally
different forms of interactions (‘the formalistic’ and ‘the informalistic’, see 2007, 198).
There appears to be a larger consensus among the analysed discourses that portraying
the formal and the informal as separate entities with no connections is an outdated
viewpoint.
Another, more popular approach depicts connections between informality and
formality as causal influence from one to the other. The directional connection
stands at the very core of the conceptualisation of the economic legalists and
housing studies. The informal was seen as temporary: an externality caused by
Towards a taxonomic understanding of informality 409

state inefficiency, which would similarly disappear once public actions addressed
shortcomings that prevented the informal to be absorbed by formal institutions.
More recently, directional links can also be identified in the urban planning litera-
ture. The formal is equated with the view of the dominant imprinted in state
institutions, and the informal – as a consequence – produced by the state and the
inefficiency of its administrative apparatus (Roy, 2005; Porter, 2011; McFarlane
and Waibel, 2012). This idea is nevertheless partially reversed by scholars who
stress the cultural particularity of informality as a resistance to established norms.
In this case, informality assumes a much more active role, rather than a passive or
reactive one (Varley, 2013).
In contrast to the aforementioned directional link, the concept of interconnectivity
stresses the criss-cross patterns of influence between formality and informality. While
discussions on directional linkages use the formal as the referential position, intercon-
nectivity attempts to treat the formal and informal equally by acknowledging their
constant mutual influences. Scholars of economic informality argue for perceiving
informality and formality as a mutually supporting system (Bugra, 1998, 303) with
great inter-connections (Portes and Sensenbrenner, 1993). In addition, practical
accounts of interconnections can be found in the discourses of housing and land
management, such as the informalisation of housing provision, sites and services but
also the imitation of formal planning patterns in informal land divisions.

Analysing the taxonomic table: thematic dimensions

of informality
The analysed literature shows different meanings ascribed to the idea of informality
– a cloud of meanings which we have used to develop a broad classification system
based on thematic dimensions of informality.
The existing discourses use, despite all their differences, some discernibly
similar aspects of the informal. In the sample literature, we were able to identify
112 different characteristics associated with the informal: 24 discernible charac-
teristics were associated to the economic dimension of informality, 17 to organisa-
tional, 16 to technical, 14 to each legal, social and cultural, and 13 to the political
dimension. We do not argue that all the identified characteristics are important
and should be considered for an all-embracing definition but all these characteris-
tics, even if numerous, have been addressed by the different authors as manifesta-
tions of the informal.
410 Anthony Boanada-Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

Table 1 Total lists of found terms

Informality: associated meanings and relationships

Economic dimension
(1) outside formal economy (2) response to insufficient provision/structural deficiency (3) inefficient/poor
quality/low-skill/low-tech/no resource access (4) low productivity/low wage (5) small-scale (6) exploita-
tive (7) harmful to national economies (8) under-employment/part-time/irregular/temporary (9) tempo-
rary phenomenon (macro) (10) competitive disadvantage (11) risky (12) cheaper/economic efficient
(13) resource efficient (14) rational choice (15) a valuable support system, safety net (16) competitive
advantage/ease of entry (17) self-employed (18) traditional values (19) non-monetary exchange/barter/
unremunerated (20) poverty (21) developing countries (22) dependency (23) vulnerability (24) inequality
Legal dimension
(1) outside the formal legal reach (2) no enforcement of contracts and rights (3) own laws (4) no title/
property rights (5) missing legal recognition (6)  squatting/land invasion/encroachment (7) unauthorised/
prohibited (8) illegal (9) violation of general laws (10) non-compliance to legal rules (11) criminal activi-
ties (12) harassment, extortion, repression (13) bribery (14) drug trafficking, people smuggling, money
laundering/deliberate tax evasion, stolen goods
Technical dimension
(1) outside regulation/not to standards (2) uncontrolled/unregulated/unauthorised (3) unrecorded/hidden
(4) unplanned (5) missing permits (6) produced by regulations (7) undermining orderly planning (8) inade-
quate/indecent/dirty/slum (9) not protected (10) insecure/unsafe/instable (11) lack of services/ benefits
(12) precarious (13) avoiding taxation, ‘off the books’ (14) avoiding payment of service fees (15) violating
work safety regulations and social security (16) non-compliance to technical standards/rules
Organisational dimension
(1) avoiding taxation, ‘off the books’, avoiding payment of service fees (2) violating work safety regulations
and social security (3) non-compliance to technical standards/rules (4)  (highly) organised (5) organisa-
tionally complex (6) diverse (7) horizontal networks/non-hierarchical (8) brokerage (9) not complying to
organisational standards/unrecognised (10) unconventional/unpredictable (11) faster/simpler (12) flexible/
freer (13) dynamic (14) spontaneous/independent/organic (15) process (16) gradual (17) incremental
Political dimension
(1) outside official governance (2) unofficial (3) produced/stimulated by the state (4) politically tolerated/
turned the blind-eye upon (5) lack of capacity and means (6) manipulated/patronage (7) excluded from
participation (8) no voice (9) destruction/eviction/omission (10) influence politics/political advantage
(11) political resistance or political grassroots movement (12)  ‘anti-state’ (13) heroic
Social dimension
(1) illegitimate (2) corrupted (3) immoral/illicit  (4) socially tolerated/included (5) social struggle (6) resist-
ance (7) trust (8) social/interpersonal relations (9) reciprocal/collaborative (10) intimate (11) casual (in
social terms) (12) socially excluded (13) marginal (14) not accepted
Cultural dimension
(1) self-provision/self-help/self-sufficient (2) self-initiated/intentional (3) survival (4) subsistence/short- term
strategy (5) everyday life (6) family or communal-based based (7) traditional/rural (8) local/grass-root level
(9) indigenous (10) customary (11) anti-modern (12) cultural resistance (13) alternative way of life/own
culture (14) creative/improvised/entrepreneurial
Configuration
(1) negation (2) polarities (3) continuum
Connections
(1) isolated (no or little connection) (2) directional link (3) interconnectivity
Towards a taxonomic understanding of informality 411

Below, we shortly outline each dimension and present the most relevant characteristics
presented by each one of them.

Economic dimension
Among all dimensions, the economic has been the most prolific in characterising the
informal. It is also the oldest idea of informality. The economic dimension conceptu-
alises it as an alternative economic activity taking place outside the formal economy
(25 per cent).10 Most commonly, informality is associated with poverty (85 per cent) and
developing countries (60 per cent). Often stated characteristics are the irregular status (75
per cent) and a low level of productivity (55 per cent). The identified main advantages
are being more efficient and cheaper (70 per cent) as well as representing a valuable
support system (65 per cent) for the ‘surplus workers’ and the ‘petty commercial class’.
In addition, informality is also ‘important for the middle class, even the elite’.
There are also ideas with a non-consensual use (positive and negative statements),
such as informal activities as based on non-monetary exchange (55 per cent vs. 25
per cent) and consisting of small-scale production (40 per cent vs. 35 per cent) that
are of ‘occasional nature’ and a form of ‘petty capitalism’. The reason for informal
activities is seen as being insufficient formal provision (55 per cent) but also pull factors
including ease of entry (5 per cent) and a greater capacity ‘in tackling the problems of
unemployment, poverty and inequality’, as informal solutions can often ‘be obtained
free, or at very low cost’. Less used, but nevertheless relevant perspectives are seeing
the informal as a rational choice (35 per cent) despite its risky (10 per cent) and exploit-
ative (20 per cent) nature.

Legal dimension
The legal dimension of informality deals with the relation of informality to the estab-
lished legal system. Informality is described as ‘activities at the edge of the law’, being
‘without legal title’ or violating general laws. Such activities are perceived as illegal
(80 per cent) as seen in the specific cases of land invasion and squatting (80 per cent).
Albeit informality lacks the official enforcement of contracts (15 per cent) it also has
its own laws (5 per cent) and mechanisms which allow ‘to enforce implicit contracts’.
There is much conflation of illegal and informal, particularly as it seems that the word
‘informal’ is often used as a more politically correct term for ‘illegal’ and may include
criminal activities (35 per cent) such as extortion (25 per cent), bribery (35 per cent),
theft, drug and people trafficking, money laundering and deliberate tax evasion (15
per cent). The avoidance of jointly discussing informality and illegality owes more to
10 We indicate the relational share for each specific associated meaning in brackets and use abbreviated author
reference for specific quotes.
412 Anthony Boanada-Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

political correctness than methodological consistence. This is due to the fact that the
notion of illegality is discursively dangerous and ‘justifies the worst repressive options’
(Durand-Lasserve and Tribillon, 2001, 6).

Technical dimension
Within our literature sample the economic dimension has the largest range of associ-
ated meanings but the technical dimension has the most intensive use of charac-
teristics. Its 16 associated meanings have an overall application rate of over 50 per
cent. Informality is described as taking place outside the reach of regulations (75
per cent) consisting of uncontrolled (75 per cent), unrecorded (65 per cent) and/or
unplanned (50 per cent) activities. Informal activities are described as often missing
official permits (35 per cent), being non-compliant to technical standards (35 per cent)
such as work safety regulations (15 per cent), or trying to avoid taxation (35 per cent)
and the payment of service fees (25 per cent). As a result, informal solutions are part
of ‘black market transactions’ that are ‘not defined in the rule book’. Consequently,
they may be of ‘substandard quality’, unprotected (55 per cent), unsafe (60 per cent),
and sometimes even inadequate and dirty (75 per cent). Generally, informality lacks
the benefits of their formal counterparts (70 per cent).
The cause for informality is found, according to that literature, in stringent regula-
tions (75 per cent). The breaking of standards fixed by regulations allow for cost
reduction and increased competitiveness. From such perspective, informality reduces
expenses attuned to neo-classic efficiency thinking.

Organisational dimension
The organisational dimension presents a high occurrence of conflicting concepts in
the sample literature. The more frequently stated idea is the one that portrays the
informal as organised (70 per cent) but following its own organisational logic and
‘system of norms’ that might even be complex (30 per cent), diverse (35 per cent) or
‘very heterogeneous’. However, some authors also mention the lack of structure (20
per cent) perceiving informality as unorganised (30 per cent), ‘defying the rectilinear
order’ which outcomes are ‘unpredictable’ – or just plainly as a ‘way of doing things’.
Less contested positions within the discourse conceptualise informality as outside
organisational structures (10 per cent), or as unconventional solutions (30 per cent)
that do not comply with organisational standards (20 per cent). The more normative
approaches describe informal organisations under a positive light, as largely superior
to their formal counterparts, fast (25 per cent), flexible (55 per cent), and dynamic (45
per cent) due to being process-oriented (55 per cent), gradual (20 per cent) and/or
incremental (45 per cent) in nature.
Towards a taxonomic understanding of informality 413

Political dimension
An intuitive understanding of political informality equates it with the unofficial (15
per cent) and the domain beyond ‘the reach of different levels and mechanisms of
official governance’ (30 per cent). The literature sampled, strongly argues that the
state actively produces informality (60 per cent) by deciding to take different stances
towards it, such as oppression (30 per cent), tolerance (55 per cent) or more pater-
nalistic attitudes (30 per cent) that enable to politically manipulate (50 per cent) the
masses. Traditionally, the informal population is often equated with the urban poor
who ‘cannot participate’ or just have no political voice (30 per cent).
More recently, the urban planning literature describes informality as a form of
political resistance (30 per cent) or even an anti-state practice (5 per cent), where
deprived individuals deploy heroic efforts (5 per cent) in order to attempt influencing
political outcomes (35 per cent).

Social dimension
We discern between cultural and social informality which might partly run against
widely accepted division lines. In our taxonomy, the social dimension of the informal is
created by the way formality is defined within society, in the sense of the standards set
by human macrostructures. Social informality is then put in relation to this standard.
There are two contrasting views on the social dimension. Some authors conceptualise
the informal population as socially excluded (40 per cent), not accepted (15 per cent)
or put at the margin (45 per cent). Informal activities are perceived as illegitimate (35
per cent), illicit/immoral (25 per cent) or even socially corrupting (5 per cent). Other
authors paint a more positive picture, describing the informal as being tolerated (20
per cent) stressing the aspect of a social struggle (15 per cent) or even a social resistance
(55 per cent) to mainstream society. From a social viewpoint, informality is relying
on casual (10 per cent) and interpersonal relations (50 per cent). Its ‘own informal or
group rules’ are based on ‘personal affective ties’ and characterised by reciprocity (15
per cent), trust (15 per cent), sometimes even intimacy (5 per cent).

Cultural dimension
The last dimension is the cultural one which entails all characterisations linked to the
idea of informality as a culturally distinguished sub-group. Such understanding stands
partly in the line with the ‘culture of poverty’ and shares the shortcoming of top-down
normativity (Lewis 1963). From such an angle, informality is depicted as self-provided
(70 per cent) and self-sufficient (20 per cent) solutions that have a strong link to the
fight for survival (40 per cent) and the everyday (20 per cent) subsistence (60 per cent)
414 Anthony Boanada-Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

Figure 2  The conceptualisation of informality per academic discourse. This figure maps out all
meanings associated to informality in the sample literature grouped per discourse. Specific terms
can be identified by following the numbers attributed within each dimension (economic, legal,
technical, organisational, political, social and cultural) and consulting Table 1.
Source: Authors
Towards a taxonomic understanding of informality 415

guaranteeing a ‘hand-to-mouth existence’. A cultural reading stresses the ‘habitus of

the dispossessed’, where the family or community-based (65 per cent) ‘peasant system
of production’ is dominant. It combines traditional (45 per cent), even indigenous (20
per cent) and local (40 per cent) knowledge with ‘pre-capitalistic’ techniques. Urban
planning discourses have, similarly to the political resistance, introduced the idea of
cultural resistance (5 per cent), where informality is the anti-modern (20 per cent), a
creative (35 per cent) and new way of life (25 per cent).

Results: what is the informal? Finding a transversal understanding

We started our investigation with one main concern: are discourses about informality
separated by incommensurable definitions or brought together by a common level of
understanding? Our research has substantiated the argument for greater common-
ality. Each of the seven outlined dimensions of informality is well-represented in
our sample, albeit in different extents. Most of the 112 characteristics that we have
identified in the sample literature associated with the informal are shared between
discourses. Almost half of all ideas are present in all four discourses and another
quarter in at least three. This means only 26.8 per cent of all ideas are confined to
one or two discourses.
The insights enabled by the construction of the taxonomic table have proven to be
essential for advancing our knowledge of informality. They have (i) shown a detailed
map of the ideas attached to the concept of informality, (ii) revealed the level of
proliferation of different conceptual ideas, (iii) identified ideas that are contradictory
or even incommensurable and (iv) pointed at the conceptual differences and similari-
ties between the four analysed discourses. Creating awareness about different levels
of meanings in the different discourses on informality can simplify cross-disciplinary
communication and comparison, which are prerequisites for any endeavour that aims
at developing a working definition of the term.
These results show promises of greater possible cross-disciplinary linkages. In
other words, there is no single-dimensional understanding of informality – even the
often narrowly perceived concept of economic informality makes references to the
other dimensions. The most commonly deployed dimensions by all discourses are the
technical (40 per cent) and economic ones (32.5 per cent). While the legal, cultural,
organisational and political dimensions are referenced between 24 per cent and 29.1
per cent, the social dimension is by far still the least discussed one (16.9 per cent).
The small literature sample only allows preliminary findings, but we may already
point at certain emerging patterns that distinguish discourses. The discourse with the
richest conceptualisation of the informal (the most diverse characteristics associated
with the informal) is the ‘urban informality’ literature as it provides the highest refer-
ence rating in five of the total seven categories. The most limited understanding of
416 Anthony Boanada-Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

informality is the ‘informal land tenure’ literature that has generally average scores
but the lowest score in a total of three categories. Informal housing has the most
technical and the least legal references while informal economy scores strongest in
the economic dimension and weakest in the organisational and political dimension.
The results also point to ways in which discourses could learn from each other. The
idea of informality as ‘non-compliance to legal rules’ and ‘tax evasion’ (with housing)
is dominantly used in the discussion about informal economy but almost entirely
absent in the others. The more exclusive ideas of the informal housing discourse
are the ‘incremental’ (with land) ‘unplanned’, ‘precarious’ nature of informality
with its ‘non-monetary exchange’. The discourse on informal land conceptualises
it as ‘undermining orderly planning’ and being ‘excluded from participation’ (with
planning) more than other discourses. Informal planning could ‘export’ its insight on
the informal as being ‘illegitimate’, ‘anti-modern’ and part of ‘prohibited activities’.
The discourse further stresses the ‘creative/improvised’ and ‘process’-based character.
All these insights are important steps towards creating a transversal understanding
for future interdisciplinary research. All discourses largely share common ideas and
have all dimensions covered. It is also possible to visualise the differences between
authors within and between discourses that are generally not as great as someone
might expect (see Figure 2). This macro-view can be used to evaluate each single
idea in order to assess its eventual contribution to a common understanding. The
realisation of macro-ideas could assist this assessment. Despite the quantity, the 112
characteristics can be grouped together as belonging to a more limited amount of
meta-ideas. Informality may be perceived as (i) the negation of the formal, be situated
(ii) outside the formal reach, (iii) lacking aspects of the formal, (iv) resisting/avoiding
the formal or (v) being the product of formality.

Conclusion: towards a taxonomy of the informal

The literature on informality is as diverse and rich as it is fragmented. Different
schools of thought have put forward their own understandings of informality and its
relation to formality. The general impression that scholars from different discourses
use different understandings of informality was the starting point of this article. We
carried out a selective literature review on the definitions of informality and conse-
quently developed a taxonomy in order to capture the diversity but also commonali-
ties in meaning. Limiting our sample to publications from informal economy, housing,
land tenure and urban planning, we organised all emerging ideas about the charac-
teristic of informality and its relation to formality into nine categories, two for the
relationship with formality and seven for the characterisation of informality. We were
able to show that most ideas are shared between the discourses (73.2 per cent), whereas
the remaining, more singular ones, could still be used for mutual learning experiences.
Towards a taxonomic understanding of informality 417

The research also shows gaps in the discourses, which points out new directions where
future research is needed.
The applied research design is complex and not without limitations. We test our
research idea on a reduced and selective sample of pre-established academic discourses.
The sample only allows a glimpse into the diversity of understandings. This article
should be considered as a first stepping stone towards a broader research agenda that
breaks down the often taken for granted ideas associated to the informal. A way to
advance a deeper understanding of informality is to pay more attention to the historic
development of discourses and evolution of the terms (in theory and practice).
This taxonomic study should make a variety of contributions. For example, it may
assist scholars in bridging the distance between different discourses to work towards
a more comprehensive understanding of informality and ultimately contribute to a
new generation of development policies that are better apt to tackle the challenges of
the twenty-first century. Scholars may use the taxonomy to clarify/assess their own
understanding of informality and flesh out their own working definitions by selecting
important characteristics and eliminating less pertinent ones. The range of associated
meanings offers new insights on aspects that they may have not considered yet. In
addition, the reading of the table shows that there might be a gap in certain aspects
of the study of informality that general scholarship should pay more attention to,
such is the case of the social dimension. Last, but not less relevant, this research can
have practical implications in the design of different development policies tackling
the informal across sectors. The taxonomic table is a visual map which shows not
only different meanings ascribed to the informal but also the perceived relationship
between the informal and the realm of the ‘formal’, and therefore acts as a visual tool
helping practitioners and policy makers to include different stakeholders and their
understandings of the informal – contributing to more inclusive, participative and
cross-sector policy making.

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