AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

120 ISABELLE TURCOTTE
formally is also diminished. In other words, economic and labor relations
have become thinner as a consequence of moving towards trade liberalization,
which has created promising conditions for the expansion of informal
employment relations and informal enterprises, the two units of interest
according to the recent development in the informal economy debate.
A related development within the national institutional framework
occurred a year prior to the labor reform. The Colombian National Small
Enterprise Policy can either be understood as a timely initiative to support
the wide base of micro-entrepreneurs throughout the country, or as
a precondition to absorb reallocated workers as a result of labor flexibilization.
This national plan to assist micro-enterprises combined the effectiveness
of the National Learning Service, SENA, and the creation of
Centers for Productive Development throughout the country (Helmsing,
2001: 11). These centers became focal points for the cooperation of
various local players in economic affairs and allowed the different regions
the ability to react to cyclical upturns and downturns that drive the
dynamic displacement of workers.
Of course it would be incorrect to assume that micro-entrepreneurs
are necessarily part of the informal economy, as Florez reminds us that
in the case of Colombia “the self-employed and owners of small firms
are generally very different types of workers. Self-employment mostly
includes street vendors whereas small firms refer mainly to small entrepreneurs”
(Florez, 2002: 18). Regardless of definitions, creating a national
policy sends an important message on the importance of entrepreneurial
ventures.
CONSTRUCTING INTERESTS AND INTERVENTIONS
In light of these historical events, tensions, linkages and developments, a
better conceptualization of both the informal economy and of the Colombian
institutional framework will allow us to transfer meaning to the
experience of informality and its interventions in the national context.
A significant shift in focus relative to informality occurred after the
1980s as neoliberal thought concretely materialized in domestic and regional
practices. The problem of employment which is at the base of the proliferation
of the informal economy has increasingly become understood
as a variable of economic growth, which intrinsically is a variable of the
competitiveness of productive systems which are in and of themselves
groupings of enterprises divided along the lines of their area of industrial