The Informal Economy and Employment in Brazil

The book presents some in-depth cases regarding specific informal economic activities in Brazil (waste pickers and street vendors at Porto Alegre, commercial agents and door-to-door sellers at Itapetininga and Nova Friburgo).

Using the ethnographic approach, the author shows the social and economic processes that allow the informal economy to be reproduced, revealing the complex and heterogeneous relations between the formal and the informal parts of economy, and between informal workers and local authorities.

The attention focused on the substantive meaning of the economy, understood as a system that furnishes the material means necessary to ensure human subsistence.