To work or not to work: In/formalization practices in the Italian public sector
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3074
This piece examines the position of workfare scheme recipients in the municipal administration of a southern Italian city. Looking at the interplay between different regulatory frameworks – from administrative to labour and welfare reforms – in a particular locale, I emphasize the analytical relevance of the formal-informal linkage in understanding the production of spheres of informality and negotiation within a bureaucracy.
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Antonio Maria Pusceddu
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To work or not to work: In/formalization practices in the Italian public sector
Text.Serial.Journal
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Forum: In/formalization
2017-12-31
2017-11-24
2017-12-31
2017-12-31
85-89
1
Antonio Maria Pusceddu
2017/12/31
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3074
85
Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
2239-625X
2
en
89
To work or not to work: In/formalization practices in the Italian public sector
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                                              2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 85-89




                                                                                     FORUM




Brindisi to the Brindisians, graffiti in Brindisi, Italy. Photo by A. M. Pusceddu.


In/formalization
Edited by
Alan SMART, Josephine SMART, Filippo M. ZERILLI

Contributions of
Stamatis AMARIANAKIS, Lenka BRUNCLÍKOVÁ, Dolores KOENIG, B. Lynne MILGRAM, Sarah
MUIR, Antonio Maria PUSCEDDU, Alan SMART, Mechthild VON VACANO, Filippo M.
ZERILLI & Julie TRAPPE.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © ANTONIO MARIA PUSCEDDU
To work or not to work: In/formalization practices in the Italian public sector
2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 85-89.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3074
IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                          85




To work or not to work
In/formalization practices in the Italian public sector

Antonio Maria PUSCEDDU
Universitat de Barcelona




ABSTRACT: This piece examines the position of workfare scheme recipients in the municipal
administration of a southern Italian city. Looking at the interplay between different regula-
tory frameworks – from administrative to labour and welfare reforms – in a particular locale,
I emphasize the analytical relevance of the formal-informal linkage in understanding the
production of spheres of informality and negotiation within a bureaucracy.



   1. There seems to be some irony in the fact that the concept of “informal
economy” entered the jargon of academics, scholars and policy makers at the
beginning of the 1970s oil crisis and became popular in the long period of
economic and political transformation that followed. Although crafted to
make sense of the difference in Third World countries economy – being, un-
der this respect, a truly «Cold War concept» (Hart 2010: 151), it did not take
too long to realize how informality was becoming a «universal feature of the
world economy» (Hart 2006: 22; cf. Ghezzi, Mingione 2004; Portes, Castells,
Benton 1989).
   Rather than focusing on informality as the simple lack of formality, it ap-
peared analytically more useful to focus on the inter-linkages between for-
mality and informality and to analyse a broad range of phenomena through
the lens of formal-informal relations. At a general and abstract level, the
concept of informality permits to think the «unspecified content» which is
built into the «bureaucratic form» (Hart 2010: 148). At the same time, one
should not forget that a certain degree of formalization is always inherent to
informality. What matters, in any case, is to underscore how formality and
informality are mutually constituted and generated.
   In this contribution to the Forum I want to focus on the formal-informal
linkages in the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. More in particular, I want
to address the emergence of particular trends of informalization of labour

                                             2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 85-89
86                                          ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


within the Italian public administration, showing how the interactions be-
tween different scales of (de)regulation and the concrete situations of local
administrations may favour the reproduction of informal labour arrange-
ments. The ethnographic material I will be briefly referring to draws from a
wider ethnography of livelihood practices and grassroots understandings of
the economy1 in a southern Italian city along the Adriatic coastline. Here I
will focus on the position of workfare scheme recipients in the local munici-
pal administration. I believe that addressing in-formalization practices in the
public administration may help raise a number of useful questions concern-
ing the definition and analytical value of the formal-informal relation in the
current historical conjuncture.
   2. In the summer of 2016 a union assembly was summoned in the town
hall to discuss a labour stabilization plan. The target of the plan were almost
eighty recipients of the LSU workfare scheme2 – Lavori Socialmente Utili (lit-
erally: socially useful jobs), who had been waiting for years to be perma-
nently hired by the administration. They were first employed in 1998 in a bi-
ennial project for promoting waste recycling and later distributed in the vari-
ous branches of the municipal administration, where they have been fulfill-
ing a variety of tasks – from administrative work to caretakers, from cleaning
services to maintenance work. However, while doing the same job as “formal”
employees, LSU “workers” were excluded from any labour regulatory frame-
work. Instead of receiving a wage and the relative benefits, they were entitled
to a temporary subsidy from the National Institute of Social Security (INPS),
periodically renewed. The “formal” difference of their position did have sub-
stantial implications that concerned labour relations, lack of bargaining
power and full subordination. They were not entitled to any reward – such as
productivity bonuses or performance related pay, which could only be allo-
cated after an informal agreement among employees who were willing to re-
nounce to a share of their own.
   During the assembly the union representatives illustrated the proposal of
the labour stabilization plan elaborated by the human resources executive.
The triennial plan estimated that part of the workers could be hired as A –
the lowest rank – and the remaining as B, according to the financial re-


1. The research was funded by the European Research Council Advanced Grant “Grassroots
Economics: Meaning, project and practice in the pursuit of livelihood” [GRECO], IDEAS-ERC
FP7, Project Number: 323743.
2. Although the LSU scheme differs in various ways from conventional workfare schemes, it
can be considered a stepping stone in the Italian transition from the classical welfare state
to a workfare model.


2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 85-89
IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                         87


sources and the organizational chart. The plan was welcome with cautious
enthusiasm, since previous expectations and promises of labour stabilization
had been repeatedly frustrated. Discomfort and disappointment, instead, had
come to prevail over time, undermining collective solidarity. During the de-
bate some female “workers” erupted, raising the issue of who were going to
get the A or B rank. The implicit suspicion was that someone could receive a
preferential help thanks to his or her connections in the administrative hier-
archy3. Others reacted by raising the issue of “deservingness”, by remarking
that «if you haven’t done anything, what can you expect?» Another com-
plained that she had always kept herself away from internal conspiracies and
for that reason was not even entitled to a writing desk. After the assembly
ended, a worker commented to me that those who didn’t manage to get a
desk were the ones who «did not want to work». On the contrary, she had
been doing everything she was requested: «It is by doing so that I earned the
desk, because I have shown that I deserve it».
   The deservingness of one’s achieved position – symbolized by the desk –
was often claimed by those workers who committed themselves to learning
and fulfilling all the task they were being assigned. In some cases, their com-
petence and knowledge of administrative work allowed them to hold posi-
tions of responsibility, by actually filling the personnel shortage. This type of
aspiration was mainly cultivated by women, most of whom held a secondary
school diploma, who nonetheless had been doing mainly unpaid housework
before applying to the LSU scheme. Men breadwinners, on the contrary, fo-
cused on saving time to keep an “informal” job to integrate the meagre (near
to) 600 Euros monthly subsidy.
   The social and economic background of the city is also important to un-
derstand how the ambiguous status of LSU “workers” is being experienced in
relation to ideas of employment and unemployment, and to the social impli-
cations of being a wage-worker or a subsidy recipient. Similarly to other
southern cities targeted by large-scale programs of capital-intensive indus-
trialization in the 1960s, it has been undergoing a process of industrial
downsizing and, eventually, gradual deindustrialization, with consequential
reduction of employment opportunities. High rates of unemployment, far
above the national average, the expansion of tertiary low-income sectors and
unwaged precarious works define the livelihood frameworks for a consistent
segment of the population (cf. Mingione 1988).

3. Collective expectations were eventually frustrated again few months later, when the newly
elected municipal government announced a revision of the labour stabilization plan, which
reduced to 22 the number of LSU “workers” to be permanently hired.

                                            2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 85-89
88                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


   3. The informalization of labour in the local municipal administration re-
sulted from the combination of various national regulatory frameworks that
in the 1990s intended to reorganize significant sectors of the economy and
state bureaucracy. First, the shift from welfare to workfare allowed local ad-
ministrations to temporarily resort to the unemployed and redundant work-
ers for the fulfilment of jobs of “public utility”. Second, the reform of the
public administration, according to the principles of the New Public Manage-
ment, began to unfold in the years the LSU scheme was implemented. Em-
ployees and LSU recipients were confronted with the increasing tension be-
tween highly formalized and businesslike representations of public services
and the informalization that regulate their actual functioning. Third, in-
creasingly binding budgetary constraints on local administrations and the
consequent reduction of resources available created the condition for resort-
ing to LSU recipients – that is, subsidy receivers – for filling the personnel
shortage.
   LSU recipients increased nationwide in the late 1990s, when they reached
the peak figure of almost 170.000 (source: INPS). At the same time a new leg-
islation provided the legal framework to “empty out” the large pool of LSU
workers by facilitating their placement in the private (e.g. granting tax
breaks) and public sectors. Nonetheless, the expectations raised by the
prospects of achieving a permanent public employment may help us under-
stand the informal logics that workers themselves appeared able to negoti-
ate. These expectations are clearly influenced by the larger social and eco-
nomic environment, where people have to cope with the scarcity of stable
and regular employment opportunities, with the recourse to vertical rela-
tions to achieve individual benefits, and where public employment is still
perceived as a relatively safe and stable social and economic position. Many
life stories of LSU recipients, if they could be recalled here, would confirm
how informality and formality are inextricably linked in people’s livelihood
strategies, in their ways of making a living and dealing with the state.
   In conclusion, the brief analysis I have undertaken suggests the analytical
relevance of the formal-informal linkage in approaching how the interplay
between different regulatory frameworks – from administrative to labour and
welfare reforms – unfolds in a particular locale. The concrete implementa-
tion of workfare schemes, more specifically, provides an interesting case for
pointing out how formalization and informalization processes are deeply in-
terlinked in the material and ideological constitution of citizenship in con-
temporary Italian society. The analysis of how workfare recipients negotiate


2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 85-89
IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                       89


their condition and prospect of in/formalization is underpinned by notions
of deservingness and dignity, but also constrained by forms of humiliation
and subordination. It is from this standpoint that, perhaps, the formal-infor-
mal linkage unfolds its analytical potentials by allowing to read also the pop-
ular dialectics of negotiation of state bureaucratic apparatus.


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Hart, Keith, 2006, Bureaucratic form and the informal economy, in Linking the for-
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Hart, Keith, 2010, Informal economy, in The human economy. A citizen’s guide, Keith
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Mingione, Enzo, 1988, Work and Informal Activities in Urban Southern Italy, in On
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Portes, Alejandro, Manuel Castells, Lauren A. Benton, eds, 1989, The Informal Econ-
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