AGIC SEMINARS -- State Reproduction From Below: Informality, Mobility and Unorganized Resistance in the Reconfiguration of Eurasian States’ Political Life
27 October 2022
10-12 am, Room A2 - Campus Einaudi
Professor Abel Polese (SeniorResearch Fellow, Institute for International Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction, Dublin City University)
Despite a growing number of studies featuring "informality" in their title, little has been done to reach a consensus on what informality means, how to measure it and, more generally, to develop it into a widely agreed and shared theorization. This presentation widens the scope of informality research to apparently non-economic and non- monetary practices. Using a definition of informality as the aggregate of transactions that are (deliberately or incidentally) concealed from the state, it argues that the distinction between economic and non-economic informality is tedious. Ultimately, the function of an informal transaction might change over time. Empirically, this presentation foots on a national study conducted in the post-socialist region to explore: 1) the relationship between a person’s status (migrant, local, male/female) and their willingness and capacity to comply with state rules; 2) the main alleged motivations to justify lack of compliance with state rules and 3) the typology of informal behaviours used not to comply.