Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the relationships between informal workers and states – and the politics of creating and accessing these linkages – are a critical and frequently overlooked part of the politics of the COVID 19 pandemic.

Paper long abstract:

Informal workers are both particularly vulnerable to the health and economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and often neglected by policy responses. At the same time, the crisis has rapidly changed the ways that states engage with informal workers. We argue that the relationships between informal workers and states – and the politics of creating and accessing these linkages – are a critical and frequently overlooked part of the politics of the pandemic. Both pre-existing structural disconnections from the state, such as limited access to health infrastructure, and state attempts at building new connections, such as cash transfer programmes for informal workers, have a profound impact on states’ ability to support large sections of their populations throughout the crisis. Consequently, without considering the varied and dynamic nature of the linkages between states and informal workers we cannot understand the heterogeneous health and economic landscape of the pandemic, state capacity to respond to the crisis, or institutional change in the context of crisis.