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ABSTRACT
The World Bank has for over a decade tried to formalize the informal economy in Kosovo. However, local journalists and businessmen among others provide an alternative understanding of informality that problematizes the World Bank’s view and actions. Against this backdrop, the article analyses the constitution and the constitutive effects of the World Bank’s anti-informality operations in Kosovo between 1999 and 2014. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s power analytics, the article claims that the Bank’s agenda, and the economic ideas enacted through it, does structure and shape informal economic practices on the ground. Yet this structuring involves two forms of misrecognition. As a result, informality is paradoxically constituted (in novel ways) and reconstituted through the World Bank’s imposed anti-informality agenda. The article concludes with a discussion of how this underlines the need for policy solutions that depart from liberal peacebuilding’s subject–object distinction to form instead around an acknowledgement of informality as emergent and transforming throughout international interventions.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Berit Bliesemann de Guevara and the two reviewers for their insightful and useful comments on an earlier version of this article. Research for this article was supported by a grant from the Swedish Research Council.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on Contributor
Anna Danielsson earned her PhD from Uppsala University in 2014. She has been a postdoctoral researcher and Lecturer at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Tübingen and a Lecturer at Södertörn University. Anna currently holds a postdoctoral position at Uppsala University funded by the Swedish Research Council. Her present work focuses on conflict expertise, knowledge production and performativity through international interventions into conflict contexts, with a particular focus on the countries of former Yugoslavia. ([email protected])
Notes
1 This article focuses on informal economic practices among the Kosovo-Albanian majority in Kosovo. It thus excludes informality among the Serbian and other minorities, where also the dynamics of informal practices likely differ (see for example Kostovicova, Martin, and Bojicic-Dzelilovic Citation2012). It has to be said that the article seeks to illustrate the constitutive effects of the World Bank's anti-informality agenda rather than to explain the complexities of all aspects of informal economic dynamics in Kosovo. As stated, there are probably more than two possible interpretations of informality in Kosovo, depending on the perspective that one applies.
2 Interview, Naser Grajçevci, Director of the Small and Medium Enterprise Support Agency at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Pristina, September 2010; Interview, Lumir Abdixhiku, Executive Director of the Riinvest Institute, Pristina, March 2011.
3 Interview, Lumir Abdixhiku, Executive Director of the Riinvest Institute, Pristina, March 2011.
4 Interview, Migjen Kelmendi, Journalist and Broadcaster, Pristina, March 2011.
5 Between 2010 and 2011 I undertook various research trips to Kosovo and conducted interviews with local state representatives, journalists, NGOs and business owners in Pristina, Prizren and Gjakova. The interviews with businesses owners were less structured. I formulated open-ended questions around various topics that concerned business strategies, everyday practices and experienced necessities. Since the topic of informality could prove sensitive, I did not bring it up as such. Yet most respondents perceived various informal practices as given parts of their business operations. Most respondents did not however equate their own practices with those of the ‘informal economy’. All respondents have been given pseudonyms, except for those who agreed to participate under their own name.
6 Compared to the literature on democratization, civil society and legitimacy of international administrations (e.g. Pula Citation2003; Yannis Citation2004; Narten Citation2008; Visoka Citation2012; Lemay-Hébert Citation2013), research on the economic dimensions of the Balkan interventions is marginal (Pugh Citation2002, 468; Uberti, Demukaj, and Lemay-Hébert Citation2014, 429).
7 See also Danielsson (Citation2015) for a discussion of the informal economy in Kosovo as a locally conditioned phenomenon. The article at hand draws in part on the same interview material but differs by providing an account of the international-local power relations that structure and reconstitute informal economic practices on the ground.
8 This is not to deny the instances in which international actors have been directly involved in local illicit or informal exchanges (see for example Pugh Citation2005a).
9 One example is the World Bank funded formalization programme in Peru that drew upon legalist ideas.
10 Interview, ‘Agim', Business owner, Prizren, April 2011.
11 Interview, ‘Kushtrim', Business owner, Pristina, April 2011.
12 Interview, ‘Veton', Business owner, Pristina, April 2011.
13 Interview, Lumir Abdixhiku, Executive Director of the Riinvest Institute, Pristina, March 2011.
14 Interview, ‘Dritan', Business owner, Prizren, April 2011.
15 Interview, Senior Manager, Kosovo Tax Administration, Pristina, April 2011.
16 Interview, Labinot Salihu, Executive Director of KUSA, Pristina, March 2011.
17 Interview, ‘Agim', Business owner, Prizren, April 2011.
18 Interview, ‘Fatmir', Business owner, Pristina, April 2011; Interview, ‘Pjeter', Business owner, Gjakova, April 2011.
19 Interview, ‘Bekim', Business owner, Pristina, April 2011.
20 Interview, ‘Kushtrim', Business owner, Pristina, April 2011.
21 Interview, ‘Fatmir', Business owner, Pristina, April 2011.
22 Interview, ‘Veton', Business owner, Pristina, April 2011.
23 Interview, ‘Fatmir', Business owner, Pristina, April 2011.
24 Interview, ‘Bekim', Business owner, Pristina, April 2011.
25 Interview, ‘Agim', Business owner, Prizren, April 2011.