Cette thèse étudie le développement des micro entreprises au Vietnam. Nous cherchons d'abord à savoir quels sont les facteurs qui affectent l'offre de travail indépendant sur le marché du travail. En utilisant l'enquête sur le niveau de vie des ménages en 2004 (VHLSS04), enquête dans laquelle les informations sur l'emploi des individus et sur les entreprises familiales sont collectées, nous trouvons qu'un certain nombre de déterminants permettent de décrire le profil des travailleurs indépendants au Vietnam, parmi lesquels la différence de revenu attendu, le niveau d'éducation, l'âge et le secteur d'activité. Dans un deuxième temps, nous tentons d'identifier les déterminants de la performance des micro et petites entreprises. Nos résultats montrent que la hauteur de l'impact de différents caractéristiques des entreprises varie nettement en fonction de leur performance. Parmi ces facteurs, la taille, l'âge et l'emplacement de l'entreprise affectent significativement cette performance. Le troisième chapitre propose une recherche sur l'hétérogénéité des entreprise face à différentes barrières à la croissance. Les données indiquent que le degré de contrainte que les entreprises rencontrent dépend de leurs caractéristiques et de la nature de la barrière. La taille, l'âge, l'emplacement et la branche économique comptent beaucoup dans la détermination du niveau de contrainte. / This thesis investigates the development of micro enterprises in Vietnam. We seek to know what factors affect the self-employment supply on the labour market. Using data from the survey on household living standards in 2004 (VHLSS04) in which information on employment of individual and household businesses are collected, we find a certain number of determinants explaining the pattern of self-employed in Vietnam: earnings differentials, educational level, age and business sector. In the second chapter, we seek to identify the determinants of micro and small firm performance. Our results show that impact of different factors on firm performance varies significantly across its growth state. Among them, size, age and firm location matters a lot to firm growth. The third chapter aims at analyzing the heterogeneity of firms across different barriers to growth. Our empirical evidence reveals that the level of constraint met by firms depends on the firm characteristics and the nature of barrier to growth. Size, age, location and industrial sector constitute important determinants of constraint level.

Through the story of Kathputli Colony, thiss essay; Creating Urbanity – Destroying Cultures, Relationships Between Public and Private in Kathputli Colony, New Delhi, India, discusses various degrees of public and private in urban architecture. It compares the architecture of the former Kathputli Colony with the new architecture proposed for the site. Striving to become a “world class city”, Delhi has, through the Master Plan 2021, decided to raze all informal settlements and replace them with high-rises. Kathputli Colony was such an informal settlement; an urban environment built up by an architecture that responded to the needs and economic means of its inhabitants. Its design was the result of network connections and personal relationships merging public and private life. The essay concludes that Kathputli Colony consisted of a heterogeneous architecture, that had more in common with pre-industrial urbanism and village-architecture, than with the modernist architecture of the high-rises with its clear separation between public and private, work and leisure.

The aim of this essay was to examine chat communication in the World of Warcraft on-line interactive game in order to place the chat on the formal/informal continuum using speech and writing as extremes, as well as to examine the linguistic context of the chat situation within a broadly Hallidayian perspective and tenor of the participants. A corpus of 3675 words was gathered from the game on the realm or game server of Bloodfeather. The data was analysed by counting the frequency of a few selected linguistic features and compared with examples of speech and writing. The research showed that the chat in World of Warcraft was highly informal and would on the continuum be placed as more informal than the speech extract used for comparison. The results also indicated that context plays a small role in shaping the chat conversation and that tenor have close to no significance at all.

In Ethiopia, the economic dilemmas facing the country have had various effects on the society at large. Given this situation, the high rates of urbanization and uneployment has resulted in that more and more people end up in small-scale activities within the informal economy. Although the informal sector has become increasingly noticeable in Addis Ababa, it is commonly neglected and separated from the formal economy. In light of the contemporary Ethiopian society, this study has nonetheless argued that the wide range of economic activities found within the informal sector is indispensable and should be integrated with the formal economy. Instead of perceiving the informal economy as an economic malfunction, this study has aimed to explore its future potential through the help of microfinance institutions. It has also looked into how the informal sector can be defined and its main characteristics. To gain an increased understanding of how informal workers perceive their own life situation, semi-structured interviews have been carried out with informal workers from the Meklit Microfinance Institution. The theoretical framework of Friedmann's 'Whole Economy Model' and 'Disempowerment Model' was moreover applied in recognizing the role of the household as well as to which extent MFIs could be said to have increased the social power of the informal sector.             The main conclusions of this essay are that there are highly diverse features of informal workers and their businesses, which accordingly implies that MFIs need to reflect this diversity in their general operations. Although MFIs were recognized as carrying a strong potential for the development of informal activities, there were some identified obstacles in for example their organizational structure which consequently affected the profitability of their clients' businesses. The role of Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) was also recognized as having the possibility to develop into a new type of labout union as to empower the informal sector and gradually lead to a natural continuation of the formal economy.

Few studies have attempted to determine the tenability of Community Participation (CP) theory is explicating Water Production and Management dynamics in Urban Informal Settlements. Consequently, several gaps exist in knowledge of the value of this important theory for efforts to improve water service delivery in such settlements. The main purpose of this study is to contribute to efforts addressed to filling these gaps. Four water schemes established by Sustainable Aid in Africa International in partnership with different communities in the informal neighborhoods of Kisumu Kenya are used as empirical referent. The study is guided by the following three Research Questions; 1) what is the relationship between community participation and beneficiary satisfaction with the work of the water management committees in the four schemes? 2) what are the contributions (positive or negative) of community participation on the production of clean potable water supply in the informal settlements? 3) what are the participation-related factors affecting the performance of the schemes? Uncovering answers to these questions entailed the use of a mixed methods approach. The approach involved the application of both quantitative and qualitative techniques. The former was employed mainly to answer the first two Research Questions and latter to deal with Research Question Three. The quantitative component of data collection involved administering a survey questionnaire through a simple random sampling technique. Logistic Regression and Chi-square Tests were employed to analyze the quantitative data. In the qualitative phase, Focus Group Discussions, Observation, Transect Walks and Photographic evidence was used to collect data analyzed through Constant Comparison Analytic technique. For Research Question One, the logistic regression results indicate that five participatory variables are significantly associated with beneficiary satisfaction with the work of the water management committees. These are provision of paid or unpaid labor to the water schemes, household willingness to intervene against pipe vandalism, meeting attendance, willingness to contribute money or time to the community water scheme and whether a household has ever made a complaint about water supply/quality issues. For Research Question Two, the chi-square test shows that households who use community managed water schemes and attend water and sanitation meetings tend to practice better water handing hygiene in the settlements. For Research Question Three, the following factors are identified to be either aiding and/or impeding the success of the schemes; networking and collaboration, continuous community engagement/participation, the formation of water consumer groups, coordination and organizational management, extent of institutional formalization, provision of dividends to the community, clannism, population increase, and poverty and community fatigue. This dissertation sheds new light on the role played by CP in managing vital resources such as water in urban informal settlements/neighborhoods. An important policy contribution is that CP can be used as a viable strategy in the establishment of effective water schemes in urban informal settlements. Furthermore, it can act as an antidote with regards to water quality improvements in urban informal settlements/neighborhoods.

In this contribution, we investigate the relationships between paid and unpaid work in the lifeworlds of employed informal carers against the background of the Austrian long-term care regime. We pursue a twofold argument: On the one hand, we emphasize that combining paid and unpaid work currently poses serious difficulties for employed family carers in their everyday lives and impacts their current and future financial and social security. On the other hand, we argue that the relationships between employment and informal care are in fact not well understood by the common concepts of "reconciliation" or "work-life balance". These concepts are not able to explain the complexities of employed carers' lived realities and fail to adequately address the fundamental contradiction in the idea of a "reconciliation" of paid and unpaid work.

Denna studie ämnar undersöka huruvida yrkesverksamma upplever att mångfald påverkar förutsättningar för lärande inom arbetsgrupper. Syftet har operationaliserats i forskningsfrågan “Hur upplevs mångfald påverka förutsättningar för lärande i arbetsgrupper?” samt dess två underfrågor “på vilka sätt upplevs mångfald vara en förutsättning för lärande i arbetsgrupper?” och “på vilka sätt upplevs mångfald vara ett hinder för lärande i arbetsgrupper?”. Det empiriska materialet har tillhandahållits med hjälp av kvalitativ ansats i form av semistrukturerade intervjuer samt tematisk analys. Studieresultaten visade att samtliga informanter, trots deras olika branscher, resonerar på liknande sätt och upplever att mångfald och heterogenitet medför stora förutsättningar för lärande i form av nya perspektiv, erfarenhetsutbyte och ifrågasättande. Resultaten visade även att mångfald kan skapa hinder för lärande, när perspektiv och erfarenheter undanhålls på grund av maktskillnader och hierarkier. Informanternas erfarenheter visar att de gemensamt är positivt inställda till förutsättningarna för lärande inom arbetsgrupper som mångfald medför. Slutsatserna som dragits är att uppfattningen av huruvida mångfald påverkar lärandet beror på individers inställning till mångfald samt arbetets och gruppens kontext. Mångfaldsbegreppet är komplext och svårt att mäta, då det kan formas till att passa individers egna värderingar. Det gör att det påverkar hur de kan se på förutsättningar och hinder för lärande på olika sätt, till följd av definitionen av mångfald. / This study aims to examine whether professionals experience that diversity affects the conditions for learning within working groups. The purpose has been operationalized in the research question "How is diversity perceived to affect the conditions for learning in working groups?" and its two sub questions "In what ways is diversity considered to be a prerequisite for learning in working groups?" and "In what ways is diversity considered to be an obstacle for learning in working groups?". The empirical material has been provided by a qualitative approach, in the form of semi structured interviews and thematic analysis. The study results show that all informants, despite their different industries, reason similarly and feel that diversity and heterogeneity imply great learning opportunities in terms of new perspectives, experience sharing and questioning. The results also show that diversity can create barriers to learning, when perspectives and experiences are retained due to differences in power and hierarchies. The informants' experiences show that they are jointly positive to the prerequisites for learning within workgroups that diversity brings. The conclusions drawn are that the perception of diversity is influenced by the individual's approach to diversity and the context of the work and the group. Diversity as a concept is complex and difficult to measure, as it can be tailored to the individual's own values, which affects how one can interpret the conditions and obstacles to learning differently, as a result of the diversity definition.

The main focus of this study was to perform an assessment of viable and sustainable means of creating a vibrant and sustainable economy in the Mdantsane Township. In order to perform the assessment objectives were formulated which aimed at assessing whether the informal small business sector of Mdantsane was generating wealth and livelihoods for the people running them. The study also looked at whether the informal business sector is a preferred option by most South Africans or people in the townships would rather seek employment. A number of data collection methods were used in completing this study such as literature reviews and a semi-structured questionnaire. The study revealed that Local Economic development can be implemented in the townships in order to assist in stimulating a vibrant local township economy. The study also revealed that the central focus of Local Economic Development is to support the development, growth and retention of private or co-operative enterprises. The survey conducted in the study further revealed that most businesses in the township are driven by necessity in order for them to start their businesses mainly due to unemployment. These businesses all agreed on the significant role that Local Economic Development can play in assisting township entrepreneurs and communities to grow and prosper.

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Since China's shift to market socialism, many marginalized by this process work as informal street vendors where they reappropriate public space in order to survive―a practice at odds with urban authorities' modernizing agenda. In relation to these competing logics concerning public space's use value versus its exchange value, this dissertation examines the practices, experiences, and agency of informal street vendors working in Sanjingwuwei, an ordinary, yet rapidly gentrifying, neighborhood of Nanchang, capital and largest city of southeastern China's Jiangxi Province. After describing the growth of an informal economy in modern China and providing a history of street vending, I describe the everyday practices of vendors and their reappropriation of public space in Nanchang and the Sanjingwuwei neighborhood. I then provide the socio-demographic details of Sanjingwuwei’s vendors and use their voices to demonstrate how city image protection, a burgeoning informal sector, and the globalization of urban space bring challenges to their already precarious work in the streets. The dissertation concludes by linking the practices and agency of Nanchang’s vendors into a theoretical discussion concerning the agency of informal street workers. Despite daily attempts by the local state to remove them, this study shows how Nanchang's street vendors, continue to actively engaging in alternative forms of urban space-making through reappropriating of public space. Therefore, this dissertation shows how vendors challenge the city as a system by downscaling, slowing down, decommodifying, and ultimately, deglobalizing urban space to neighborhood-level through their reappropriation of public space.