Social Protection, Informality, and Social Reproduction: A Schematic Analytical Framework for Latin America

Abstract

The lack of social protection coverage for informal workers is an enduring problem in Latin American countries, to which governments have responded by expanding different forms of social assistance. This solution has been insufficient, however, and it is also criticized for deepening the fragmentation of social protection systems. In this article, I adopt an alternative view to analyze such matters, based on the Theory of Social Reproduction and a schematic representation of National Systems of Social Protection from the French Regulation school. I adapt the schematic representation to portray a typology of systems of social reproduction with informality, which makes up an analytical framework to understand the interaction between informality and social protection. Based on it, I argue that social protection fragmentation and the pervasiveness of informality are both stabilizing social responses in the context of an increased commodification of social reproduction in Latin America. Therefore, these problems should be better addressed through institutional and structural transformations towards decommodification that push capital to internalize the costs of social reproduction.