Navigating the Grey Areas
The Informal Economy in Jamaica
Navigating the Grey Areas
The Informal Economy in Jamaica
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Description
While informality is often seen as marginal or illegal, in Jamaica it functions as a critical survival strategy that sustains livelihoods and provides social protections where the state has retreated. Jamaica's informal economy has developed and persisted in the face of shifting global and domestic pressures. Tracing the historical trajectory from colonial dependency to neoliberal restructuring, Navigating the Grey Areas: The Informal Economy in Jamaica highlights how internal governance challenges and external pressures from international financial institutions have constrained state capacity, deepened inequality, and reinforced reliance on informal networks. Through case studies and sectoral analysis, it demonstrates the resilience and adaptability of informal actors, who create their own systems of support and community-based protections. Rather than treating informality as a problem to be eliminated, Navigating the Grey Areas contends that it is a central component of Jamaica's political economy, one that both reveals the limits of state governance and underscores the creativity and agency of its people.
Table of Contents
1: Navigating the Grey Areas
2: Informal Economies, Neoliberalism, and Peripheral Capitalism
PART TWO: STRUCTURES AND TRANSFORMATIONS
3: Globalization, Development, and the Jamaican State
4: Community-Based Development, Clientelism, and Liberalized Markets
PART THREE: CASE STUDIES
5: Higglers, Informal Commercial Importers, and Semi-formal Entrepreneurialism
6: Cooperative Rastafari Economies
7: Informal Cultural Entrepreneurs in the Tourism Sector
CONCLUSION
8: The Informal Economy in Jamaica: Implications for Economic Development
References
Product details
| Published | 01 Apr 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 224 |
| ISBN | 9781666979619 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 6 tables |
| Dimensions | 229 x 152 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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