Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)

In this chapter we identify the character and the contours of the informal economy, informal labour market and the challenges for informal workers to engage in meaningful LLL and skills development in LAC. We open the spaces for this discussion by telling a story of Haiti’s contemporary social, cultural, economic and political situation, and the possibilities for any real progress in relation to these challenges. We reference the substantial academic and grey literature that suggests that the COVID-19 crisis has amplified the scale, scope and character of the informal economy, indicating that informal employment is the most pervasive “structural weakness” in the LAC economies. Our provocation argues that the challenges faced by informal workers in the informal economies of LAC are significant and appear not to be amenable to the sorts of remedies that organisations such as the World Bank propose, indeed, the historical actions of many of these organisations have produced these challenges. We examine the influence of the Washington Consensus in shaping the LAC’s “lost decade” and the political economy of LLL in LAC.