Introduction: Borders, Informality, International Trade and Customs

Abstract

This special section deals with cross-border in goods. Trading goods is an original human activity that precedes borders (Renfrew 1969). With rise of nation-states with demarcated political boundaries, that crosses borders became regulated by government institutions such as Customs, with tariffs, quotas, or outright prohibitions. While borders are perhaps not quite the dead, fixed, undialectical, immobile (Foucault 1970, 70), they are a formal structure that places less flexibility on activities. Focusing on informality thus provided an opportunity to reflect on governance of international trade, which has been marked by increasing consolidation of its rules in last decades. Informal cross-border affects symbolic power of State, particularly where State takes one of its more concrete forms, as the borders. Indeed, at borders, where commodities flows are regulated, informal forces governments to balance or choose between rule avoidance with economic contribution, as well as social relations. This tension between economic, political and social dimensions of informal at borders is reflected in this special section. Any paper that discusses informality must confront its definition. Informality can escape state control, and researchers do not necessarily want to be similarly outflanked. The term appeared for first time in a report of International Labor Office (1972) and in an article by Hart (1973), an anthropologist who had worked in Ghana a few years earlier and succeeded in in local markets. Throughout its use, word has been attached to labor, sector, economy, trade and practices. 2 Academics have worked on this in vogue concept for over 30 years, use of which has become so widespread as to be disputed for that very reason (Hart 2005; Klein 1999). We seem to be suffering from an overdose of informality, a feeling of having exhausted use of a concept while still not knowing how to manage without it. In turning their attention to situation of international trade, merely because policymakers, development experts and civil servants in field use concept of informality, researchers may find themselves in tricky position of using a concept that has become part of collective scientific psyche without adhering to a definition or participating in controversies relating to it.