Informal Workers in the Early 20th-Century Urban Economy of Mexico

What are the relevant historical antecedents and historical connections to the concept of informality and the informal economy from the mid to late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Latin America? Based on her research from the 1870s to 1940s in Mexico, Jimenez will share how many informal, self-employed porters, newspaper sellers, errand boys, parking attendants, and shoe shiners occupied an in-between position in the growing urban labor economy. They were independent workers, not paid wages, without an overarching employer, and working in public spaces. While informal in many respects, these workers were subject to urban regulations and municipal registration requirements. They participated in patronage and associational networks. Notably, a significant hierarchy emerged between these registered informal workers and unregistered, hence “illegal,” “ambulante [itinerant]” workers in the informal economy of the expanding Mexican city. The role of these workers was transitional in several ways: in rural to urban migration patterns; as a form of social mobility, and more broadly for the shifting urban economy.