Abstract
The concept of informal sector is polymorphous. For some, it is a response to the bureaucratic entanglements that smother the productive forces capable of leading a country on to the road to competitive capitalism; for others, it is merely a set of activities that fall between the cracks of an incomplete and sluggish capitalism; a third interpetation of this phenomenon argues that it is a strategy on the part of capitalist enterprises to submerge or refunctionalize part of their production in order to minimize costs; finally, it has been altogether disassociated from underdevelopment and seen as part and parcel of the globalization of the world economy.
In this paper, I show the intellectual journey that links the old theory of marginalization in Latin America to the views now in good currency. From a conception of the marginalized as a burden to be incorporated into societies as a condition for overcoming underdevelopment, we have evolved to one that sees these as bearers of a societal project that promises to launch Latin America on the path to capitalist development. The paper shows, further, that these different views - whether marxist or neoliberal - share the same empirical indicators of marginalization.
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