INSEAI Newsletter - August 2026

Project & Network Highlights  l  August 2026

August brought a quieter rhythm to INSEAI, as the European summer break temporarily slowed down the academic calendar. Yet the network remained active across both sides of the Atlantic, with research discussions, ongoing secondments and new contributions continuing throughout the month.

A summer view of the Atlantic Ocean, reflecting the quieter rhythm of August before INSEAI’s academic activities gather pace again in September.

Across Latin America, August remained an active month for the network. In Argentina, researchers on secondment explored new methodological approaches to cross-country informality and the organisation of informal firms, while activities in Costa Rica addressed informality from the perspectives of gender and migration. A further INSEAI Lecture connected researchers in Brazil and Europe around the persistence of informality and its implications for social development. Meanwhile, the INSEAI Blog brought a new perspective on popular economies, gender and everyday forms of work in Northern Argentina, while preparations continued for the network’s next major meeting: the Third INSEAI Workshop, to be held in A Coruña in November.

A quieter month in the European academic calendar, but an active one across the wider INSEAI network — and a reminder of its geographical breadth across different institutions, countries and research contexts.

Research & Discussion

Despite the summer break, August provided a new opportunity for methodological exchange through an INSEAI Training Discussion held on 20 August , connecting researchers in Europe and Latin America.

On 17 August , Vasile Alecsandru Strat (Bucharest University of Economic Studies) delivered the INSEAI Lecture “The Long Shadow of Informality: Persistence, Asymmetry, and the Social Development Trap” . Presented by Valeria Pero (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) , the online session added a further Europe–Latin America perspective to the debate on the persistence of informality and its implications for social development.

Mihai Cruceru and Bogdan Diaconu (University “Constantin Brâncuși” of Târgu Jiu) presenting new approaches to the analysis of informality during the INSEAI Training Discussion held on 20 August.

The session featured Mihai Cruceru and Bogdan Diaconu , both from the University “Constantin Brâncuși” of Târgu Jiu (Romania) and on secondment at the Social Debt Observatory of the Catholic University of Argentina. Their presentations approached informality from two complementary perspectives, combining new methodological tools with the analysis of organisational practices within informal firms.

Cruceru presented “An Automated Machine Learning Framework for Cross-Country Informality Analysis” , introducing an automated and reproducible framework designed to forecast informality across countries. The approach responds to one of the recurring difficulties in comparative research on informality: sparse and uneven data. By automating data preparation, feature engineering and model selection, the framework seeks to produce comparable forecasts together with confidence intervals for individual countries.

Diaconu’s contribution, “Organizational and Financial Structure within Informality” , shifted attention towards the internal organisation of informal firms. Using simple business practices as indicators, the analysis drew on the World Bank Informal Sector Enterprise Survey for Peru and introduced a comparison with Argentina. One particularly revealing dimension concerned the separation of business accounts from household expenses, reported by 71% of the Peruvian firms analysed compared with 47% of the Argentine firms.

Together, the two presentations illustrated the diversity of approaches required to understand informality: from new computational tools capable of improving cross-country measurement to the everyday organisational and financial practices through which informal economic activity operates.

Secondments & International Cooperation

August also saw significant INSEAI activity in Costa Rica , where Diana Ochoa Díaz and Julimar da Silva Bichara (UAM) participated in a series of academic activities at the National University of Costa Rica (UNA) as part of their secondments.

Between 18 and 25 August , the programme included a seminar by Diana Ochoa on labour informality from a feminist economics perspective, a comparative workshop on informality in Latin America and Spain, and a conference by Julimar da Silva on labour informality and migration in Latin America. Together with Shirley Benavides and Leonela Artavia Jiménez (UNA) , these activities strengthened UAM–UNA cooperation while bringing gender, migration and attitudes towards informality into the network’s comparative research agenda.

Professors Diana Ochoa Díaz and Julimar da Silva Bichara (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) during the Workshop on Informality in Latin America and Spain at the National University of Costa Rica (UNA).

NSEAI Blog: Popular Economies from Northern Argentina

August also brought a new contribution to the INSEAI Blog. Florencia Antonella Nieva (National University of Jujuy) published “Beyond Informality: Popular Economies, Gender, and Temporalities in Northern Argentina” , offering a perspective that moves beyond conventional definitions of informality to examine the everyday organisation of work and livelihoods in Northern Argentina.

The contribution focuses on activities such as neighbourhood fairs, street vending, family workshops, community kitchens, recycling and small-scale production. Rather than interpreting these practices simply as incomplete forms of formal employment, the article approaches them through the concept of the popular economy , paying particular attention to the role of women, household reproduction, family networks and community organisation.

A particularly interesting aspect of the analysis is its use of different temporalities. Everyday strategies for “living day to day” coexist with the transformations of the Argentine labour market since the 1990s and with much older community practices and circuits of reciprocity. In Jujuy, these different layers are also connected with rural–urban exchanges and Andean economic traditions.

The contribution therefore raises a broader question for research on formalisation. If many forms of popular economic activity are embedded in historically constructed family and community networks, formalisation cannot necessarily be understood simply as a transition towards a standard model of wage employment. The challenge is also to consider how public policies can interact with these existing social arrangements without dismantling the networks on which livelihoods depend.

llustration accompanying the INSEAI Blog contribution “Beyond Informality: Popular Economies, Gender, and Temporalities in Northern Argentina” , by Florencia Antonella Nieva (National University of Jujuy).

Looking Ahead: From Summer to a New Academic Season

As the summer period comes to an end, INSEAI is preparing for a new phase of academic activity, with the Third INSEAI Workshop as one of the network’s major upcoming milestones.

Entitled “Economic, Juridical and Political Frameworks and Cultural and Moral Beliefs: Informality, Socioeconomic Inequalities and Well-Being” , the workshop will take place on 26–27 November 2026 at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of A Coruña , in hybrid format.

The meeting will bring together researchers, academics, policymakers and practitioners to examine the interaction between economic, legal and political frameworks, cultural values and moral beliefs, and their implications for informality, socioeconomic inequalities and well-being. The programme is intended to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue across labour-market dynamics, social inclusion, institutional frameworks, cultural norms, welfare and sustainable development.

Looking ahead to September: Santos M. Ruesga (UAM), INSEAI Project Coordinator, will open the new academic season with a teaching session on “Hybrid Informality”.

The deadline for registration and abstract submission is 5 October , followed by notification of acceptance on 15 October and full-paper submission by 31 October.

As August gives way to a new academic season, INSEAI’s programme resumes immediately on 1 September with a new teaching session devoted to “Hybrid Informality” , led by Santos M. Ruesga (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) .

The session will examine how the rapid expansion of digital technologies is challenging traditional distinctions between formal and informal economic activities. Digital labour platforms, fintech, artificial intelligence, e-government and digital identification systems are creating forms of work characterised by greater digital visibility and partial integration into formal institutions, while workers may nevertheless remain outside conventional labour and social protection systems. The concept of hybrid informality is proposed as a framework for understanding these emerging forms of platform work, online entrepreneurship and digitally mediated self-employment.

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• Newsletter Team: Matías Membiela-Pollán (Coord.), Xose Picatoste-Novo, Sandrina Teixeira.