This article aims to confront Foucault’s (2001) concept of heterotopia (2001) – the physical location of an utopia – with a "new, "informal and non-institutionalized retail space for gleaning second hand items : the sidewalk during the time of bulky item collection. A qualitative survey...

The paper aims at qualifying the links between labor-market-institutions, taxation, tax monitoring, and underground economic activity. The proposed model is a continuous time matching model with one commodity roduced either overground or underground. Underground economic activity arises because...

In 2007 the General Statistics Office (GSO) launched a joint research program with the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) to measure and analyzes the informal sector in Vietnam. Two kinds of surveys were conducted in 2007: a national Labour Force Survey (LFS) which, in a first...

In 2007, the General Statistics Office (GSO) launched a joint research program with the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD), to measure and analyzes the informal sector in Vietnam. Two kinds of surveys were conducted in 2007: a national Labour Force Survey (LFS), which, in a first...

The aim of this research is to show that though French public policy advocates sustainable development, it unwittingly deters non-institutionalized sustainable practices. To illustrate this paradox, this research focuses on bulky item collection and the urban gleaning to which it gives rise. A...

Vietnam is one of the only South East Asian emerging economies not to have gone into recession in 2009 in the wake of the world crisis. Nonetheless, it has been affected deeply by the crisis, as shown by all macro-economic indicators. The yearly growth rate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has...

Although the impact was less dramatic than in other Asian countries, Vietnam has been affected by the international crisis which started in 2008, resulting in a significant slowdown of economic growth. This paper aims at assessing the impact of this economic crisis on employment, unemployment...

While a significant proportion of French people (38%) reports having recovered objects thrown away or deposited on the sidewalk, the objective of this article is to provide a better understanding of how certain practices of gleaning bulky objects (freely decided rather than dictated by...