The Dream of Formality: Racialization Otherwise and International Economic Law

Donatella Alessandrini, Johanna del Pilar Cortes-Nieto, Luis Eslava and Anil Yilmaz Vastardis

Journal of International Economic Law, 2022, vol. 25, issue 2, 207-223

Abstract: This article explores the central role of formalization in the history and functioning of international economic law. International economic law, in constituting and managing a ‘modern’ world economy, has relied on what we call ‘the dream of formality’. This dream gives a sense of internal coherence and future totality to international economic law. It enables international economic law to claim awareness and progressive inclusion of socio-economic and legal relations outside the ‘formal’ modern economy while enabling a regime of differentiation of the so-called ‘surplus’—often racialized—population. In a world where ‘informality’ is the norm and ‘formality’ is the exception, formalization’s colonial origins have evolved into a fully-fledged regime of social management and value extraction. This regime has embedded itself in international labour law and human rights, as well as in areas of international economic law such as Aid for Trade and Global Value Chains. Building on contemporary debates on racial and post-colonial capitalism, we focus on Colombia’s informal economy to illustrate the elusiveness of the dream of formality, and how current exercises of othering underpin today’s practices of ‘racialization otherwise’. Our question, then, is: what would international economic law look like if it did not follow the dream of formality but instead embraced the challenge of sustaining life?

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jiel/jgac016 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:jieclw:v:25:y:2022:i:2:p:207-223.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Economic Law is currently edited by Kathleen Claussen, Sergio Puig and Michael Waibel

More articles in Journal of International Economic Law from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().