Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection
Globally, 2 billion people work in the informal economy. This means that 61% of workers rely on work that offers little pay and few protections. Women informal workers, such as domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers are at the base of the economic pyramid with the highest risk of poverty. Public policies and social protection schemes often do not consider these workers, leaving them vulnerable to income losses and struggling to cope after an event or shock. In this monthly podcast we will discuss some of the most pressing issues related to social protection from the perspective of informal workers, including debates around the future of work, demographic changes and the informal economy, as well as social services, like child care and health that can protect informal workers’ incomes. Subscribe to the “Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection” to learn more about WIEGO’s cutting-edge research and hear from informal workers organisations about the debates, policies, successes and challenges they face in accessing and reforming social protection systems.
Episodes
October 24, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode, we conclude the building block of delivery and provision of social protection from our social protection solar system. After discussing the role of informal workers’ organizations in the delivery of childcare and healthcare, in this third and final episode of the series, we will talk about the role of informal workers organizations in the delivery of social security benefit for workers in the informal economy.
In...
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August 12, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode, we resume the building block of our social protection solar system on the topic of delivery and provision of social protection. In this second episode of the series, we will turn to India, to understand how informal workers organizations can play an important role to improve access to their members by facilitating the last mile delivery of services or benefits.
The Self-Employed Women’s Association, SEWA, set up ...
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June 9, 2025 • 32 mins
In this episode we take a pause from the discussion around delivery and provision of social protection benefits and take a fresh look at the challenges to finance social protection in a time of very deep transformations in the world of work. Among these changes, we have increasing automation, swift advances in artificial intelligence and the emergence of forms of capital-labour relations through the mediation of platforms.
These m...
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April 11, 2025 • 34 mins
In this episode, we start a new building block of our social protection solar system with the first part of the topic on delivery and provision of social protection. We will be looking at the innovations in the delivery of services and cash grants, focusing on informal workers and on the role that informal workers organizations might have in improving access to these workers by facilitating the last mile delivery of services or ben...
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January 8, 2025 • 41 mins
In the fourth and last episode of the governance building block we dive into the discussion of social dialogue and social protection for informal workers.
But what does social dialogue actually mean? How can in be used as a tool to improve social protection schemes to better include informal workers? What are the aspects we should look at when analysing these spaces and what are the main barriers workers in the informal employment ...
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November 21, 2024 • 30 mins
In the third episode of the governance building block we move on to the discussion of legal frameworks and social protection.
How can legal provisions of participation, access to information, transparency and equality be leveraged to include those workers into social protection systems? What are the main legal frameworks? How does administrative justice work for this end and how it can be used a tool for informal workers in their a...
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August 30, 2024 • 35 mins
In the second episode of the governance building block we continue to discuss the issues surrounding digitization and social protection. This time, we take a political economy perspective to understand the interests, ideas, actors and policy implications of digitization. To help us understand this complex issue, we invited again Ruth Castel-Branco,
Ruth is a Senior Researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the Un...
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July 22, 2024 • 31 mins
In this episode, we start a new building block of our social protection solar system with the first episode on the topic of governance. We have invited two guests to lay the groundwork for this block, to help us understand social protection governance, as well as the new concerns and potentials brought by digitization. We start with Tony Roberts. Tony is a researcher based at the Institute of Development Studies on the campus of th...
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April 22, 2024 • 34 mins
In the third episode of the registration block we travel to Latin America to take a regional overview of this issue regarding domestic workers. To learn the challenges these workers face to be registered, the positive experiences, as well as the opportunities and limitations digital technology tools offer in this task, among other issues revolving around registration for domestic workers in Latin America, we invited Adriana Paz. Ad...
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February 29, 2024 • 28 mins
In episode five of the systems’ mapping, building blocks approach, we continue to explore the topic of registration. This time, we look closely at the Cambodian IDPoor programme, to understand to what extent a government-led effort to improve how beneficiaries of social assistance and social protection schemes are effectively accounted for – and what are the gaps, challenges and merits of this new registration drive.
To understand...
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January 9, 2024 • 28 mins
And we start the year with the first episode of the second building block of our new season, in which we will discuss the issue of registration. How is digital technology helping to include informal workers into social protection schemes or how is it creating new barriers for these people to access protection? What are the risks and opportunities? What is the role of informal workers organisations in building more inclusive registr...
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November 28, 2023 • 33 mins
This is the third and last episode of the financing building block. Previously, we discussed alternative ways to finance social protection extension for waste pickers in India and Argentina, and the struggle to finance gig workers in Rajasthan. Now we explore the challenges of financing social protection in a changing world of work.
What are the possible paths, strategies and innovations countries are undertaking to include infor...
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September 12, 2023 • 27 mins
The current episode is the second of this new season. We will continue to look at the issue of financing, which was the topic of the first episode of the system’s mapping series.
We will talk about a very important theme: how to finance the inclusion of gig workers from digital platforms of service provisions in social protection system.
We turn our attention to the Indian State of Rajasthan, where the local legislative has just pa...
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July 12, 2023 • 20 mins
WIEGO inaugura una nueva etapa de su podcast. A partir de este episodio, vamos a comprender mejor las piezas del sistema de protección social, para poder mejor comprender los retos, oportunidades y dificultades que enfrentan los trabajadores informales. Todo eso ofreciendo la perspectiva de los trabajadores, desde una aproximación ascendente.
En esta etapa, daremos atención especial al tema de la digitalización, aunque no será el ...
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July 12, 2023 • 47 mins
WIEGO starts a new phase of its podcast. From this episode onwards, we will gain a better understanding of the pieces of the social protection system, in order to better understand the challenges, opportunities and difficulties faced by informal workers. All this by offering the workers' perspective, from a bottom-up approach.
At this stage, we will give special attention to the issue of digitalisation, although it will not be the...
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April 25, 2023 • 30 mins
In 2021, WIEGO has launched the project “Challenging the global orthodoxies which undermine Universal Social Protection”. In a nutshell, the project aimed to examine some of the dominant ideas in the field of social protection that were hindering the concrete inclusion of informal workers in these schemes.
Exactly one year ago, I invited the coordinator of this project, Florian Juergens-Grant, to talk about what this project was a...
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February 16, 2023 • 40 mins
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the world in many ways. People all around the globe had to adapt to this new reality, and it was no different for informal workers leaders that struggle to improve their organizational strength.
Capacity building, one of the key aspects to increase the voice and visibility of workers, also had to be done differently. Traditional, in person events, such as exchanges, field visits or in person trai...
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December 2, 2022 • 29 mins
In India, the government has set a huge undertaking: to register 380 million informal workers on a new database, so that it could allow the delivery of social security payments. This database, called e-Shram, was launched in August 2021.
But, of course, this initiative was followed by a range of doubts, problems and barriers that has been hindering the implementation of this social registry system.
To help us better understand the ...
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September 19, 2022 • 29 mins
Social and Solidarity Economy has got into a very high place in the international agenda. This year, SSE, as it is called, was the theme of the International Labour Conference, in which workers representatives, government officials and employers representatives have gathered to discuss this alternative form of organizing production, distribution and consumption.
One of the main outcomes of the conference was that the a proposed de...
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June 27, 2022 • 44 mins
In the episode 20 of our podcast, we discussed the first round of the WIEGO longitudinal survey, conducted in 2020. In this special episode, we will discuss the report of the second round of this global survey.
In this stage, 11 cities around the globe were part of the research that explored how the fallout of the pandemic affected informal workers’ income, working hours, access to healthcare, but also their coping strategies, dem...
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