Challenging the formality bias

New article challenges the informality bias in social protection systems.

Formal social protection systems, such as health insurance and representation, are often biased in favour of formal workers, thereby excluding most of the world's working population who make a living in the informal economy.

This article extends existing critiques of formality bias by investigating the reality of work for people in the informal economy in Kenya and Tanzania and analysing related social protection challenges.

It argues, that formal social insurance and representation do not fit the real experience of most people working in the informal economy as they have been modelled on and designed to support workers in formal standard employment relations. At the same time, informal workers' associations play important roles in meeting—albeit inadequately—the social insurance and representational needs of their members.

Meaningful engagement with the reality of work and collective agency in the informal economy is therefore necessary to inform more appropriate policies and measures to provide informal workers with appropriate social protection measures, particularly social insurance and representation. Their reality should not have to conform to an inadequate model; rather, the model should fit their reality.