Labor Informality, Material Deprivation, and Territory in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area

Labor Informality, Material Deprivation, and Territory in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area

Juan Ignacio Bonfiglio 

Presentation of the Research Problem and Working Hypothesis

The relationship between poverty and labor informality has been widely addressed in the social and economic literature, particularly in the Latin American context. Numerous studies have documented the association between precarious labor market insertion and higher levels of economic vulnerability, focusing primarily on the low labor incomes associated with such occupations and their insufficiency to guarantee adequate living conditions (Beccaria and Groisman, 2008; Tokman, 1994; Rosenbluth, 1994). However, comparatively fewer studies have analyzed this relationship from a perspective that goes beyond the monetary dimension, incorporating other resources linked to employment, social protection, and habitat, as well as their impact on household material living conditions. 

In this sense, the analysis of labor informality becomes particularly relevant when linked to multidimensional approaches to poverty, which conceptualize well-being as a complex phenomenon shaped by multiple interrelated dimensions (Bonfiglio and Comas, 2025). From this perspective, labor informality not only entails income instability, but also deficits in access to social security, reduced capacity for planning, and a fragile integration into protection systems, with potential effects on access to housing, basic services, and the quality of the residential environment. 

Moreover, several studies have highlighted the close link between labor informality and urban informality, showing how precarious labor trajectories are intertwined with equally precarious forms of access to land and housing. However, these processes are not evenly distributed across urban space; rather, they tend to concentrate territorially, giving rise to specific socio-spatial configurations in which social inequalities are reinforced (Herzer et al., 2008; García, Badillo and Aristizábal, 2024). 

Based on these considerations, this paper aims to contribute to this debate through a territorial analysis of labor informality and its relationship with household material living conditions, focusing on the spatial dimension of these phenomena. In particular, it seeks to show that space is not merely a container of inequalities, but a structuring framework in which they are concentrated, reproduced, and made visible. 

In this context, the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area constitutes a particularly relevant case study for analyzing the relationship between labor informality, poverty, and territory. It is a highly heterogeneous and fragmented urban space, where areas with high levels of urban consolidation and access to services coexist with territories marked by persistent structural deficits. This socio-spatial fragmentation not only reflects historical inequalities in access to habitat and infrastructure, but also conditions labor market insertion and households’ opportunities for social reproduction. In the AMBA, labor informality and material deprivation tend to be unevenly organized across space, generating patterns of territorial concentration that cannot be explained solely by individual characteristics or by the aggregate dynamics of the labor market. 

From this perspective, the paper is structured around the following central hypothesis: labor informality is more strongly and spatially concentrated in relation to structural habitat deprivation than to income poverty, indicating that its most persistent effects are mediated by long-standing territorial inequalities. This hypothesis guides the empirical analysis and allows for the exploration not only of the magnitude of the association between labor informality and material deprivation, but also of its spatial configuration and its differential character depending on the type of deprivation considered. 

Methodological Aspects

The analysis is based on data from the 2022 National Population, Household, and Housing Census, which allows for a high level of territorial disaggregation. The unit of analysis is the census tract, a basic territorial unit that enables a more precise capture of spatial heterogeneities within the study area. 

The empirical domain of the study is the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA), a space characterized by marked socio-spatial fragmentation and strong contrasts in living conditions. These features make AMBA a particularly relevant setting for analyzing the relationship between labor informality, material deprivation, and territory. 

Labor informality is operationally defined as the proportion of employed individuals who do not contribute to social security, following standard criteria in the literature and official statistical sources. Household material deprivation is measured using the index developed by INDEC (Gómez et al., 2004), which comprises two complementary dimensions: 

i) Deprivation of current resources, associated with the household’s economic capacity and linked to variables such as the educational level of income earners and the number of earners in the household. 

ii) Deprivation of patrimonial resources, referring to structural habitat deficiencies, measured through housing quality and access to sanitation services. 

Findings 

The spatial analysis confirms that labor informality in AMBA is not evenly distributed, but instead displays marked spatial heterogeneity. Census tracts with very low and very high levels of informality coexist in close geographic proximity. Alongside this fine-grained fragmentation, large contiguous areas with a high concentration of informal employment are observed, particularly in urban peripheries, metropolitan edges, and specific corridors in the southern and western parts of AMBA. These patterns suggest the presence of persistent territorial dynamics linked to historical trajectories of urbanization, labor market segmentation, and unequal access to infrastructure and services, rather than to temporary or cyclical phenomena. 

The comparison between maps of current and patrimonial resource deprivation reveals clearly differentiated spatial configurations. Deprivation of current resources, more closely linked to income and everyday reproduction capacities, shows a broad and relatively continuous distribution, affecting extensive areas of AMBA. Its pattern is more diffuse and less territorially concentrated. In contrast, deprivation of patrimonial resources is much more localized, forming well-defined territorial clusters. These concentrations reveal structural fractures in urban space, associated with persistent deficits in housing, sanitation, and the residential environment. The center–periphery axis appears more clearly and progressively here, reinforcing the idea of long-term urban inequalities. 

Scatter plots show that the spatial overlap between informal employment and material deprivation varies depending on the type of resource considered. In the case of patrimonial resource deprivation, the spatial association is stronger and more concentrated: there is a higher density of census tracts with high values in both variables, indicating that territories with high informality tend to coincide with areas where structural habitat deficiencies are concentrated. By contrast, the scatter plot for current resource deprivation shows a weaker and more dispersed association; at similar levels of informality, the incidence of income-related deprivation exhibits greater territorial variability. In terms of overlap, this suggests that the spatial concentration of labor informality is more closely aligned with structural deprivation than with deprivation related to current resources. 

The overlap map shows that census tracts with both high informality and high deprivation form clearly identifiable territorial clusters. These concentrations are located mainly in corridors and urban peripheries, where overlap displays spatial continuity and forms relatively extensive areas of accumulated disadvantage. 

In the City of Buenos Aires and along certain consolidated railway corridors, the overlap between high levels of informality and material deprivation is much less frequent and, when present, appears in a fragmented form. This suggests marked territorial differentiation: while continuous configurations of high vulnerability prevail in peripheral areas, in central areas labor informality does not translate into structural habitat deprivation with the same intensity. 

Furthermore, the areas with the most intense overlap coincide with zones of lower urban consolidation or with interstitial spaces within the metropolitan fabric. 

Conclusions 

The evidence shows that the territorial concentration of informal employment overlaps more strongly with structural habitat deprivation than with deprivation associated with current resources, indicating that the most persistent links between informality and poverty are embedded in long-term territorial inequalities. 

Additionally, the spatial analysis reveals both continuities and discontinuities in this relationship, identifying areas where informality and structural deprivation concentrate together and others where they diverge. This rules out a homogeneous or mechanical association between labor precariousness and living conditions, and reinforces the relevance of a multidimensional and territorial approach to understanding how disadvantages are organized and accumulated in urban space. 

Bibliografía

Beccaria,L., & Groisman,F. (2008). Informalidad y pobreza en Argentina. Investigación económica, 67(266), 135-169.

Bonfiglio, J.I.; Comas, G. (2025) “The impact of labor informality on the non-monetary deprivations of households: an analysis of multidimensional poverty in Argentina (2021-2024)” Workshop “Theoretical context on informal activity. Conceptual framework. Informality and Sustainable Growth Models. Macro and Micro perspectives”, ISBN: 978-84-09-80627-0. Universidad Federal Fluminense, Niteroi, Brasil, 21 de noviembre. 

García, G. A., Badillo, E. R., & Aristizábal, J. M. (2024). Housing informality and labor informality in space: In search of the missing links. Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, 17(3), 923-949.

Gómez, A., Alvarez, G., Mario, S., & Olmos, F. (2004). Metodología de elaboración del Índice de Privación Material de los Hogares (IPMH).

Herzer, H., Di Virgilio, M., Rodríguez, C., & Redondo, A. (2008). ¿ Informalidad o informalidades?: Hábitat popular e informalidades urbanas en áreas urbanas consolidadas. Pampa: Revista Interuniversitaria de Estudios Territoriales, (4), 85-112.

Rosenbluth, G. (1994). Informalidad y pobreza en América Latina. Revista de la CEPAL, 1994(52), 157-177.

Tokman, V. E. (1994). Informalidad y pobreza: progreso social y modernización productiva.  El Trimestre Económico, 61(241(1)), 177–199. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45401630