From ‘Relative Surplus Population’ and ‘Dual Labour Markets’ to ‘Informal’ and ‘Formal’ Employment and Enterprises: Insights About Causation and Consequences

Sheila Bhalla

Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 2017, vol. 6, issue 3, 295-305

Abstract: This essay traces the intellectual history of the concepts ‘informal’ sector and ‘informal economy’ from Karl Marx to Arthur Lewis, Barry Bluestone, Keith Hart and S. V. Sethuraman.* It shows how the Marxian dynamics of ‘relative surplus population’ has been replaced by the concept of ‘informal economy’. It also discusses the dynamic role of population pressure on agriculture in many countries of the Global South. Finally, it is suggested that the strategies advocated by the International Labour Organization (ILO) since the 1970s have tended to narrow the areas of investigation promoted by them.

Keywords: Informal economy; agriculture; employment policy; relative surplus population; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2277976017745460 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:agspub:v:6:y:2017:i:3:p:295-305

DOI: 10.1177/2277976017745460

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy from Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().