Moving back and forth between the commercial centres of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay and São Paulo in Brazil, Beyond Informality: How Chinese Migrants Transformed a Border Economy (Stanford University Press, 2025) charts the journeys of Chinese migrants entangled in informal trade networks. The author offers a fresh perspective on the informal economy as comprising a dynamic interplay of informality and formality, illegality and legality, showing how migrants masterfully navigate the margins of the law as they seek to earn profits and defend their markets against the relentless force of urban regeneration. Law, Douglas de Toledo Piza demonstrates, is not merely a by-product of the market. Rather, it shapes the informal economy and, for better or worse, affects the lives of those who participate in it.

Miriam Driessen: You start your book with vivid recollections of a childhood bus trip to Ciudad del Este with your parents. The bustling markets of this Paraguayan border city seem to have left a lasting impression on you. What drew you to these popular markets, both as a child and, later, as a researcher?

Douglas de Toledo Piza: Beyond Informality centres on my standpoint as the son of an informal economy worker, as well as an ethnographer of migrant vendors across borders. I am a first-generation college student who grew up commuting from my hometown to the markets I analyse in the book. Seeing the harsh realities of being a vendor in precarious marketplaces, I developed my scholarly interest from my early observation of how informal markets are social spaces of struggle, solidarity, and ethnic diversity. I draw from my unique vantage point as a witness, scholar, and advocate to examine migrants’ experiences in the informal markets, inviting the reader to follow the story of Chinese migrants from the perspective of what I saw, studied, and fought for alongside vendors.

Spanning more than a decade, my research for the book built on the long-term relationships of trust I developed with Chinese vendors. The factor that drew me to these markets in my early academic career was my intellectual curiosity about the lives of Chinese migrants in these spaces of social and economic marginalisation. As a college student majoring in international relations with a focus on Mandarin Chinese, my initial interest in Chinese migration to Brazil revolved around cultural aspects, especially language.

The more I interacted with Chinese migrants in São Paulo, the more I realised that economic precarity was a major impediment to them. This is because the primary form of socioeconomic integration of newly arrived Chinese migrants was—and largely still is—in the informal economy. Soon, I became an activist committed to Chinese vendors and workers in the informal economy. I volunteered in a campaign that helped regularise the immigration status of more than 25,000 Chinese migrants in Brazil in 2009–11. After moving to the borderlands of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina in 2012, I was introduced to new communities of Chinese and Taiwanese in Ciudad del Este. Throughout those years, my motivation for this project was personal, academic, and political. By looking at the struggles of Chinese vendors in the informal economy of South America, I strive to bring my research to bear on how we can serve communities, addressing issues such as xenophobia, racism, and classism.

MD: The book compellingly reveals the power of the law in shaping economic processes, thereby challenging orthodox Marxist perspectives that overlook its influence. In particular, you develop the concept of ‘capture by illegality’ to show how economic elites instrumentalise the law to extract profits from legally precarious vendors. Can you give an example?

DTP: What I call ‘capture by illegality’ is the flexible application of the law that enables economic elites to explore loopholes, changes in economic regulation, and uneven enforcement, thereby accumulating the wealth that vendors generate in the informal economy. In an informal economy that is constantly on the brink of being shut down, legality is not neutral, but rather instrumentalised to serve special interests that let the powerful thrive and the marginalised suffer. In Beyond Informality, I argue that a transnational elite of Chinese businesspeople fundamentally altered the commodity circuit between Paraguay and Brazil by working around legality and amassing the profits of thousands of Chinese vendors and other workers.

Examples of capture by illegality include urban redevelopment concessions and the privatisation of public markets. In these cases, the state acts as a broker for private investors, granting them urban redevelopment concessions for popular markets. As a result, vendors are pushed off the street and other public lands. This not only limits access to public resources, but also privatises the management of markets and clears out spaces to build ‘prime’ shops that vendors cannot afford to rent.

A clear illustration is the Shopping Circuit Project that São Paulo City Hall launched in 2011. Under this project, Chinese importers and other investors redeveloped the infrastructure of some popular markets in exchange for the privatisation of the management of the ‘Dawn Market’—an indoor market with more than 5,000 stalls, half of which were run by Chinese migrants. Initially, the Dawn Market was self-managed by vendors. However, realising that they were taking in astonishing revenues, City Hall took aggressive steps in 2009 to assert control over the market. First, they implemented public management, then they leased the land from the federal government, and, eventually, they privatised management. City Hall also deployed military police under ‘Operation Delegated’ and gave them unprecedent powers to enforce street vending regulations in targeted areas, allowing for brutality.

The Shopping Circuit Project represents a major shift in the policies for the popular markets in São Paulo. In the past, City Hall tried to eradicate the informal economy, but eventually they discovered the enormous economic potential of those markets and the promotion of these locations as tourist destinations for shopping replaced the desire to eliminate them. Investors captured a large portion of the wealth that circulated in the popular markets through the collection of rents and the incorporation of highly valued land. The project paved the way for further capitalist devices of valorisation and accumulation in this sector.

MD: Some of the Chinese migrants with whom you worked had a precarious legal status or were involved in illegal activities. What were the challenges of studying vendors who operate on the fringes of the law? Can you give an example?

DTP: The challenges of researching Chinese vendors in those liminal markets were many. Doing an ethnography of unlawful activities across borders and through multiple legal systems led to some data being inaccessible or unreportable. I was constantly aware of research ethics limitations and the potential harms that could be caused to the people described in the book and to myself. Occasionally, some research interlocutors stopped sharing information. They feared that sharing specific sensitive information could jeopardise their immigration status or put them at odds with local law enforcement, or both. I also had to establish boundaries to protect their safety and mine when it came to the collection of ethnographic data. Some situations were particularly difficult, especially when they involved policing of street vending, disputes about access to work in public spaces, and the movement of people and goods across the border between Paraguay and Brazil.

As an ethnographer who was aware of the precarious immigration status of vendors and the illegal nature of activities in the popular markets, I privileged long-term observation and spontaneous conversations over prearranged visits. Being immersed in the field allowed me to observe and partake in the migrants’ daily life, despite our asymmetric positions. I engaged in activities such as eating meals with them in their workplace, sharing moments of leisure in public or private spaces, celebrating cultural festivities, attending religious ceremonies, and participating in demonstrations. This form of immersion is based on trust cultivated over years and respect earned with a track record of empathy, solidarity, and allyship. It exposed me to both everyday behaviour and dramatic situations, adding new information and perspectives to the data collected through interviews and archival research.

Sometimes, I had to forgo confidential information, but I am glad I learned about issues that informed my perspective even if I could not disclose them in my writing. This helped me search for complementary data sources to paint a more holistic picture. The multiplicity of data sources enabled me to explore contradictions and tensions across sources, geographies, and temporalities. I used these multiple approaches to contrast narratives from a wide range of perspectives, and problematised contradictory information and competing interpretations of reality.

MD: I appreciate your discussion of Chinese migrant associations and the critical role they play in governing migration and migrant activities on the ground. You explain how these associations can both grant and restrict access, effectively maintaining control over migrants. Could you elaborate on the relationship between your interlocutors and these associations? How did they benefit from them while also facing certain disadvantages? And what is the relationship between these associations and the Chinese State?

DTP: The Chinese migrant associations in Ciudad del Este and São Paulo are varied such as hometown associations, kin groups, cultural clubs, mutual assistance societies, and chambers of commerce. As a unique kind of local and transnational civil society actor, these associations play an ambivalent role. On the one hand, the associations unlock opportunities for migrants to work in the informal economy by assisting new businesses to grow, providing legal counselling, and representing vendors’ interests in public and official affairs. Associations provide business support services such as access to credit, banking literacy education, and accounting workshops that are key to the success of vendors. They also facilitate the importation and distribution of goods. These organisations are key connectors for newcomers to find work opportunities in the shopping centres, which are the primary income-generating activities of newly arrived Chinese migrants. Additionally, associations leverage their power to negotiate on behalf of vendors with city governments and law enforcement agencies.

On the other hand, the associations rigidly organise the community’s affairs and exercise tight control over vendors, limiting migrants’ options for jobs, trapping them in a cycle of debt, and hindering their ability to find alternative housing arrangements. They do not hesitate to use the vendors’ immigration status as leverage for compliance. For example, associations often appoint some of the largest importers, distributors, and developers to key decision-making roles and honorary positions in their organisations, thus legitimising the coercion suffered by undocumented vendors and keeping them in line. The costs of social membership of these associations are evident, especially when associations can retaliate against migrants who do not align.

In Ciudad del Este and São Paulo, the associations follow an international model of affiliation to a parent ‘umbrella’ organisation. The parent organisation, in turn, is a chapter of an international diaspora association directly linked to the Republic of China or the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission (僑務委員會) was established in 1926 by the Republican government and has been a high-level agency in Taiwan since 1949 (renamed in 2012 the Overseas Community Affairs Council, Republic of China [Taiwan] or 中華民國僑務委員會). Similarly, the PRC established its own commission in 1949, abolished it shortly after and re-created it in 1978 as the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (国务院侨务办公室), a cabinet-level agency that is mandated to design and implement diaspora policies. Although this agency was merged with the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (中共中央统一战线工作部) in 2018, the former name is still generally used in public statements. The migrant associations in Paraguay and Brazil are closely aligned with either one of these agencies, locally implementing diaspora policies that are set in Asia.

MD: You show how geopolitics and the global economy enter the popular markets in Ciudad del Este and São Paulo. How has China’s rise influenced the informal economy in these two cities? And what do the cases of Paraguay and Brazil reveal about the influence of geopolitics on the informal economy more generally?

DTP: Chinese diasporas are tipping the scale of the deep-seated informal economies in the Global South in favour of an emerging transnational Chinese business elite of importers. Through the labour of Chinese migrants, economic elites are transforming local economies into lucrative transnational circuits of cheap imports resulting from China’s export-led industrialisation. These transformations are partially the product of China’s rise and represent new prospects for migrants’ success in informal economies that move large quantities of cheap imports. China’s rise also shapes the direction of diaspora policies, both helping the revival of diasporic Chinese identity and creating new migration routes alongside the growing informal economies.

A key strategy of the PRC’s overseas Chinese affairs agencies to connect with the diaspora is ‘inviting in’ (请进来). Xi Jinping’s administration has made significant changes to diaspora policy. Xi is a longstanding proponent of ‘large overseas Chinese affairs’ (大侨务), calling for broad and deep cooperation between China and the diaspora. This idea is an integral part of the ‘Chinese Dream’ (中国梦)—one of the central pillars of the current government’s political ideology, combining economic modernisation, technological innovation, and cultural revival. Through a major restructuring of diaspora institutions, China has been instrumentalising diaspora policies for geopolitical purposes, moving from the economic support of the diasporas in the late 2000s towards expanding China’s soft power abroad. If the diasporas played a key role in China’s export-led industrialisation in the 1990s and early 2000s by providing the necessary capital, the success of the diasporas in the informal economies abroad today is seen as a crucial factor to support China’s export sectors, particularly affordable consumer goods.

Another strategy to strengthen ties with the diaspora is ‘reaching out’ (走出去,which can also be translated as ‘going out’). This strategy ran in parallel with China’s ‘Going Out Policy’, also known as ‘Going Global Strategy’, which enabled it to boost its construction companies abroad and served as a blueprint for more ambitious foreign policy projects across developing economies, including the Belt and Road Initiative. When the government launched the Going Global Strategy in 2000, it replaced the slogan ‘return and serve the country’ (回国服务) with ‘serve the country’ (为国服务), suggesting not only that physical return was no longer a requirement for the display of patriotism, but also that diasporas are a strategic asset abroad. As domestic and global economic inequalities continue to push Chinese migrants to new destinations—including in South America’s informal economy—diasporas are, at the same time, put in unique positions to overhaul markets and increase trade of China’s competitive exports.

MD: What do you see as your contribution to the study of Global China? What do you hope readers take away from the book?

DTP: Beyond Informality offers a new perspective on the much debated rise of China and opens new directions for research of its impact on globalisation at the grassroots. While most accounts of China’s economic and geopolitical ascension focus on macroeconomic trends or foreign affairs, my bottom-up approach shows that migrants and the diaspora are key transnational actors in China’s global presence and strategic agents for its success. Migrant associations, diaspora agencies, and other unexpected drivers of China’s rise cooperate and compete to engage with overseas Chinese populations. The growing presence of Chinese migrants, traders, and investors—in parallel with the unprecedented reach of China’s soft and hard power—makes evident the need to offer nuanced explanations of China’s role in global affairs. At a time when other superpowers are retreating from globalisation, the book offers a fresh look at the way we conceptualise China in the world and the transformation of global power and geopolitical order. The reader will finish the book with an understanding of how grassroots actors and China’s diaspora policy are shaping new directions of globalisation.