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ity is given to employment status and to the relation between employer and employee rather than to enterprise characteristics. On the other hand this paper also highlights the limitations of the existing statistical methods for measuring informal labour. It is important to have a clear definition of informality, for example, for formulating laws that act as an important mediative force that can both support or combat exploitative conditions in the informal economy (Chen, 2005). Focus is being given to the overlap between being poor and working in the informal economy. The paper ends with the proposal of a simple model for poverty reduction that includes employment opportunities and employment based rights among its variables. This article is clearly very important for my research question as it defines informal labour in a satisfactory way. The definition that is proposed gives the opportunity to disaggregate informal workers in various categories and this enables me to make comparisons of the various segments of informal workers in terms of average earnings and gender segmentation of labour. From the definition it is understood that that globalization and informal labour are linked through global value chains and labour market flexibility.

The central argument of the fourth paper by Maloney is that the urban microenterprise should be viewed as a part of a small firm sector similar to those in advanced countries that due to the laxity of enforcement of labour and of other codes is able to choose the optimal degree of participation in formal institutions (Maloney). The author thinks of the informal sector as the unregulated, developing country analogue of the voluntary entrepreneurial small firm sector found in advanced countries rather than a residual comprised of disadvantaged workers rationed out of good jobs (Maloney). I think that his arguments are in contrast with many other well respected studies (Chang, 2009, Chen, 2005). I also think that the argument of the author that the disproportionate representation of women in informal employment may again be found in desirable characteristics of the informal sector, particularly flexibility, is gendered biased. The fact that women work in the informal sector to balance their productive and their reproductive role, doesna€™t mean that they choose freely to do so. Maloney argues that the remuneration in the informal sector is higher than in the formal sector and therefore it balances the loss of other benefits like pension or social security. But that happens because he takes into consideration only the self-employed entrepreneurs and not the vast majority of the informal laborers that are wage workers and that earn much less in the informal sector than in the formal sector as he acknowledges in other parts of his article. This article is relevant to my research because it has the opposite view to mine regarding informal labour markets and globalization. It represents the neoliberal approach to understanding informal labour markets and it somehow frames the debate that exists among informal labour market researchers. This neo-liberal approach explains the emergence of the informal sector as a result of excessive State intervention through labour regulation, legal requirements to establish a firm and heavy taxation.

The fifth paper by Barrientos argues that exist two contradictory pressures operating on labour in the informal economy. Globalization is leadi