“…There is little scholarly consensus on a precise definition of “informality.” Indeed, the recently published Global Encyclopaedia of Informality opens with the claim that informality is indefinable, saying that “it would probably be difficult to agree on a definition of informality acceptable to all.” Instead, the publication uses the word “informality” as “an umbrella term for a variety of social and cultural phenomena that are too complex to be grasped in a single definition,” but which broadly refers to “the world’s open secrets, unwritten rules and hidden practices” (Ledeneva, Bailey, Barron, Curro, and Teague 2018, 1). McFarlane and Waibel (2012) discuss various ways in which informality has been conceived: as a spatial category (the “slum”), an organizational form (characterized by spontaneity and tacit knowledge rather than explicit rules), a governmental tool (which enables certain modes of intervention), and a “negotiability of value” (shaped through shifting social relations). To anthropologist Julia Elyachar (2005), “informal” practices “have a legitimacy that is not the state’s,” even though the state may be implicated in perpetuating informality (pp.…”