Since its coining in 1971, the concept of the “informal sector” has been used to draw scholarly, political, and philanthropic attention to hundreds of millions of workers who lack basic labor protections. But as the term proliferated, so too did its detractors. Critics claim that the label of “informal” homogenizes the world's poor and distorts understandings of the sources of and solutions to their economic woes. What are the origins of the concept's contradictory nature? What strategies have scholars used to increase the likelihood that it will be used to illuminate and uplift, rather than to distort and denigrate? This article analyzes how scholars have resignified and retheorized the informal economy in response to five conceptual challenges: stigmatization, definitional fuzziness, homogenization, an either/or fallacy, and the presumption of “formalization” as the solution. Such efforts have preserved the concept's analytic potency and political relevance. In the longer term, however, a true testament to the concept's value would be if it outlives its own utility; that is, if it mobilizes enough recognition and resources to the invisibilized majority of the world's workers that scholars and state bureaucrats no longer feel the need to lump them together under a misleading catchall label.

中文翻译：

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问题化“非正规部门”：50 年的批评、澄清、资格和更多批评

自 1971 年提出以来，“非正规部门”的概念已被用来引起学术界、政治界和慈善界对数亿缺乏基本劳动保护的工人的关注。但随着这个词的激增，它的批评者也越来越多。批评者声称，“非正式”的标签使世界上的穷人同质化，并扭曲了对他们经济困境的根源和解决方案的理解。这个概念的矛盾性质的起源是什么？学者们使用了什么策略来增加它被用来照亮和提升而不是扭曲和诋毁的可能性？本文分析了学者如何重新定义和重新理论化非正规经济以应对五个概念挑战：污名化、定义模糊、同质化、非此即彼的谬误、并推定以“形式化”为解决方案。这些努力保留了该概念的分析效力和政治相关性。然而，从长远来看，这个概念价值的真正证明是它的寿命是否超过其自身的效用；也就是说，如果它为世界上大多数无形的工人动员了足够的认可和资源，那么学者和国家官僚就不再觉得有必要将他们放在一个具有误导性的笼统标签下。