INSEAI and the UNA School of Economics strengthen their collaboration in Costa Rica

Representatives of the INSEAI network and the School of Economics of the National University of Costa Rica (UNA) held a working meeting to review the network’s activities in the country and outline future avenues for academic and research cooperation.

The meeting was attended by the Director of the UNA School of Economics, Jorge Andrey Valenciano, the INSEAI team coordinator at UNA, Leonela Artavia, and the INSEAI project coordinator, Santos Miguel Ruesga, from the Autonomous University of Madrid. The participants took stock of recent activities —including seminars, workshops, conferences and research secondments— and discussed upcoming lines of work, in line with INSEAI’s comparative research agenda on labour informality and formalisation policies.

The project coordinator expressed his gratitude to the UNA School of Economics for its highly active participation in the INSEAI network, highlighting its contribution to strengthening academic dialogue between Europe and Latin America and to the development of joint research, training and knowledge-transfer activities.

“Digitalization and Hybrid Informality” teaching session at UNA

As part of this visit, the INSEAI coordinator delivered the teaching session “Digitalization and Hybrid Informality” at the National University of Costa Rica on 1 September 2026, introduced by Leonela Artavia Jiménez, INSEAI team coordinator at UNA.

The session explored how digital transformation is reshaping the boundaries between formal and informal economic activity, generating new forms of employment and self-employment in which greater digital visibility can coexist with gaps in labour rights and social protection. The discussion focused on the impact of digital labour platforms, fintech, artificial intelligence, e-government and digital identification systems on the organisation of work, proposing the concept of “hybrid informality” as a framework for analysing these emerging realities.

The event was attended by faculty members, undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers from the School of Economics and served to deepen understanding of the challenges that digitalisation poses for the design of formalisation and social protection policies in Latin America and Europe.

A strategic partnership for research on informality

The meeting and the conference reinforce the alliance between UNA and the INSEAI project, consolidating the School of Economics as a key node of the network in Central America and expanding opportunities for mobility, joint research and training of new researchers in the field of labour economics and formalisation policies.