The current productive restructuring in Central America is creating significant changes in the region's labour markets. New sectors of tradeables are emerging which, from the point of view of labour, cannot be characterised as formal. Indeed, formal employment is currently in a state of decline while the informal sector is redefining its internal heterogeneity. This article focuses on the new expressions of informality. Three scenarios are identified: the economy of poverty, subcontracting, and the agglomeration of small dynamic enterprises. Various analytical aspects are considered in each of these three scenarios: the context of the globalisation process; the type of informality; the resources which are mobilised; the challenges faced; and the identities generated. The analysis is based on the evidence supplied by three case studies. The first refers to the former public employees of Managua (Nicaragua) who, in the aftermath of state reforms, presently pursue informal activities. The second example concerns a group of women in the community of Puente Alto (Honduras) who work as subcontracted producers for an industrial export firm. Sarchí, Costa Rica's principal artisan centre, illustrates the third scenario.

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This article examines the processes through which small enterprises pursuing an accumulation strategy are inserted into the global economic regime. Our focus on small enterprises in globalization has a dual objective. First, in analytic terms, it suggests that the key question to be addressed concerns the opportunities and threats that globalization produces for this type of enterprise. In this regard, the concept of upgrading proves critical to addressing this question. Second, from a methodological perspective, the approach leads us to adopt a view ‘from below’, i.e., from the position of small enterprises themselves. The analysis is intended to complement rather than to challenge the ‘top-down’ perspectives that characterize studies of globalization, and in which small enterprises tend to be rendered invisible. This study examines two empirical cases: the software sector in Costa Rica and the development of the garment industry in a cluster concentrated in an indigenous community in Guatemala.

One of the research issues which FLACSO (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) has been most interested in is that of the heterogeneity found in the informal world. In a previous study we tried to clarify its presence in the metropolitan cities of Central America and we concluded that, although dynamic economic units orientated towards a logic of accumulation existed, activities orientated towards a logic of subsistence predominated. Thus, a central feature of informality became clear: its inner heterogeneity. This characteristic was previously deemphasised by an improper identification of informality with microenterprise.

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