Globally, half of all economic activity is informal. In times of global insecurity, more and more importance is being placed on integrating the productive energy of this informality, in order to ensure economic growth and social cohesion. Informal marketplaces and the numerous conflicts around their edges form both the location and guiding factors of this development. From markets of the survival economy to staged economic alterity, this book traces the discourses, actors, contradictions and potentials which these new forms of informality promote