Situated agency in precarious labor: intersectional insights from women in Lebanon’s informal economy

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to examine women’s participation in informal employment in Lebanon through an intersectional lens that foregrounds power, positioning and agency under conditions of protracted crisis. It advances intersectional scholarship by conceptualizing women’s informal labor in Lebanon as a translocational and relational field of power, where agency emerges within shifting configurations of legality, gender, citizenship and crisis. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on interviews with 20 women and Anthias’s frameworks of translocational positionality, the study shows that women’s economic lives are shaped not by fixed identities but by dynamic intersections of legality, gender, economy, space and social networks. Legal status, citizenship and displacement anchor women in distinct forms of precarity, while adaptive practices, social ties and moral commitments enable survival, recognition and micro-resistance. Informality is thus both a site of vulnerability and a space where relational, situated and ethically grounded agency emerges. Findings – The paper illuminates the differentiated experiences of Lebanese, Syrian refugee, Palestinian refugee and migrant women and advances intersectional analyses by linking macro-level structures to micro-level practices and translocational positionality. Legal status, displacement and crisis structure differentiated forms of precarity. Within these constraints, women negotiate work, identity and aspiration through relational and moral practices that produce context-bound and situated agency. Originality/value – This study offers grounded empirical evidence from Lebanon on how women navigate informal labor under crisis conditions, while extending intersectional analysis beyond Western contexts. It reconceptualizes informal work as a dynamic site where vulnerability and agency are co-produced. The findings challenge homogenizing interpretations of informal work and offer critical insights that support dignity, resilience and context-sensitive empowerment in precarious labor contexts. It extends intersectional analysis beyond Western settings and offers a comparative, multi-level framework for understanding gendered labor in crisis-affected economies.