(Im)Mobilities and Informality as Livelihood Strategies in Transnational Social Fields

Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between (im)mobility and informality by analyzing how informal practices evolve when people migrate and move within transnational social fields. The livelihood perspective allows us to analyze informality and (im)mobility as strategies that individuals and households perform to make a living, including the role played by institutions. The chapter shows that transnational migrants learn how to navigate and exploit formal rules to get things done by adapting their informal practices to the new context following two parallel processes: informalization and formalization. On the one hand, adapting informality entails learning the unwritten rules and selecting, preserving, and adjusting some informal practices while abandoning others, primarily illegal, illicit, and harmful. On the other hand, the formalization process involves adopting the formal rules of the new context, especially those about the residence and work permits. Thus, transnational networks and geographical mobilities allow migrants to exploit the grey areas of various formal systems that come to contact in making a living.