Out of the Shadows

Patricia Fernández-Kelly is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Princeton University, where she also holds an appointment with the Office of Population Research.Jon Shefner is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee.

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPatricia Fernández-Kelly1. The Informal Economy in the Shadow of the StateMiguel Angel Centeno and Alejandro Portes2. Risk and Regulation in Informal and Illegal MarketsJohn C. Cross and Sergio Peña3. Neoliberalism, Markets, and Informal Grassroots EconomiesJosé Itzigsohn4. Vanishing Assets: Cumulative Disadvantages Among the Urban PoorMercedes González de la Rocha5. Female Household Headship, Privation and Power: Challenging the “Feminization of Poverty” ThesisSylvia Chant6. Protest in Contemporary Argentina: A Contentious Repertoire in the MakingJavier Auyero7. The Even More Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from BrazilRobert Gay8. Informal Politics in the Mexican Democratic Transition: The Case of the People’s Urban MovementJuan Manuel Ramírez Sáis9. “Do You Think Democracy Is a Magical Thing?”—From Basic Needs to Democratization in Informal PoliticsJon ShefnerReferencesIndex

“With few exceptions, scholars from Left to Right have presented simplistic accounts of the political ramifications of economic informality in the underdeveloped world. Such depictions have been curiously out of sync with the salutary influence of the ‘bringing the state back in’ scholarship of the last couple of decades or so. This volume makes a crucial contribution to the scholarly and policy literatures by emphasizing the embeddedness of informal economies in state-society arrangements that cut across local, national, and transnational terrains of the Latin American and global political economies. The volume represents essential reading for scholars, policy specialists, students, and others who seek to make sense of the politico-social consequences of deepening inequality and poverty in the contemporary world.”—Richard Tardanico, Florida International University