| Informality and the World of Work

Brief description:

Informality deals with both economic activities by workers as well as by economic units that are broadly outside formal arrangements. Yet recent data indicates that a majority of the working population of the world is engaged in informal forms of work or economic units, located in the Global South.

This course examines the reasons for several work arrangements falling outside the scope of the ‘formal’. It then focuses on the challenges in identifying and measuring informality. The course also focuses on specific forms of informality across various sectors and jurisdictions around the world. The course also seeks to understand why economic development has been accompanied by high level of informality, how social regulation plays a role in shaping informality, and what forms of work remain outside the formal/informal divide. The course examines the various legal and policy options to address the decent work deficits and vulnerability that are a feature of informality.

This is an elective course offered to the 4th/5th year BA LLB (Hons), LL M, as well as MPP students. This course builds on the labour law and public policy courses previously completed by the BA LLB (Hons), LL M and MPP students.

Detailed course description: (to be shared with students who opt for the course)

The first part of the course examines what we mean by the terms ‘work’ and ‘labour’ in order to map the boundaries of labour law, and what forms of work and activity lie outside its boundaries, and why this is so. The course takes a close look at the law and judicial decisions in India to understand how informality is legally constructed. It also examines various theories put forward to explain the persistence of informality and examines, in particular, the history of development in India to understand why such ‘dualism’ persists in India and across the world.

The course goes on to examine the distinction between formality/informality, between organised and unorganised, employed and own-account, as well as the terms informal employment and informal economy. The course proceeds to examine the statistical categories used by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as well as the National Statistical Office (NSO) in India to identify and categorise the labour force.

The course uses a multidisciplinary lens to look at specific forms of informality – outsourced work, homebased work in global supply chains, platform and gig work, street vendors, waste pickers, and other categories such as forest and construction workers. This survey across various sectors and jurisdictions is to help understand how informality has taken different forms based on the legal and policy choices made historically.

The course also focuses on the ILO Recommendation No. 204 concerning the transition from the informal to the formal economy, as also the relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), along with the key indicator of Goal 8 dealing with formalization The course examines the debate around whether formalisation of informality is an appropriate economic response. The course will use Indian law and policy as its starting point to develop an understanding of process of informalization in the Global North and the forms of informality in the Global South.

Course Objectives

• To understand the concepts of formal and informal employment relationships; the linkages between formal and informal economy
• To relate work arrangements found in informality to legal categories as well as the statistical categories used by the ILO and the NSO in India
• To understand the persistence and pervasiveness of informality to economic and legal developments in India and other jurisdictions.