Informality: A Difficult Qualification

Abstract

In the debate that has taken place in recent years, the human sciences have seen the emergence of a new term, which was initially in conflict with its function of trying to give order and form to social phenomena: informality. It is a lemma with which we are currently trying to reunite and include all the collective behaviors that act, particularly in urban spaces, in the shadow of the legal procedures that define the relationships between citizens and institutions. These phenomena mainly represent, on the one hand, an unsatisfied or new and often innovative, social demand; on the other hand, these represent the will to activate and animate democratic collective processes from the bottom up. At the same time, these phenomena seem capable of offering a design contribution to the renewal of the social organization of space and formal institutional procedures. The objective of the volume is to develop a multifocal analysis of the theme of urban informality from sociological, political, legal, and economic profiles. In this sense, this book tries to define an initial semantic-conceptual grid of approach to the topic.