Beyond Informality

How Chinese Migrants Transformed a Border Economy

Douglas de Toledo Piza

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Hardback

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English

Stanford University Press
19 August 2025

Migration, immigration & emigration; Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies; Distributive industries; Industrial relations & safety

Series: Globalization in Everyday Life

Chinese migrants are playing increasingly large, stratified roles in the informal economies of South America. One of the clearest examples of this phenomenon is in the region's largest informal economy of counterfeit and smuggled goods, spanning from Ciudad del Este, the Paraguayan border city, to São Paulo, Brazil's largest metropolis. Here, Chinese vendors, on the one hand, are some of the most marginalized workers facing a doubly difficult landscape due to their precarious immigration status and their illegal economic activities. They bear the brunt of working on the margins of the law, and as a result do not always reap the benefits of their own labor. A transnational elite of Chinese businesspeople, on the other hand, profits and profiteers from the booming market. They leverage their economic, social, and political power to bend the law to their favor and get away with irregularities, violations, and criminal behavior. In Beyond Informality Douglas de Toledo Piza reveals the complex ways these actors interact with each other, and how the law shapes those interactions. He argues that structural inequalities in the global economy push Chinese migrants to South America, while placing them, surprisingly, in positions to overhaul markets and tip the scales of deep-seated power structures in the Global South.

By: Douglas de Toledo Piza
Imprint: Stanford University Press
Country of Publication: United States [Currently unable to ship to USA: see Shipping Info]
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781503641914
ISBN 10: 1503641910
Series: Globalization in Everyday Life
Pages: 277
Publication Date: 19 August 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Douglas de Toledo Piza is Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Lafayette College.

Reviews for Beyond Informality: How Chinese Migrants Transformed a Border Economy

""Drawing on extensive ethnography, this book demonstrates the importance of popular markets in transnational commodity circuits, focusing on how Chinese business people redefine the uses of legality in the capitalist accumulation of wealth."" --Verónica Gago, University of Buenos Aires ""Empirically rich and theoretically sharp, Piza's book interrogates ambiguities key to migration and political economy but too often missed by studies that take prevailing categories and global north geographies for granted. This is the mobilities turn at its best."" --Anne McNevin, The New School