Informality and Peacebuilding: Field Notes on the Intrinsic Reproductive Principles of Informal Economic Practices in Post-Conflict Kosovo

Informal economies' relevance for peacebuilding is widely acknowledged. By providing an alternative interpretation in relation to the view that informality emerges in post-conflict environments due to the state's institutional weakness, this article contends that in Kosovo the principles of informality and its reproduction are inherent to informality itself. The article turns to the analytics of Pierre Bourdieu in order to reveal aspects of Kosovar informality left unexamined by established approaches. It illustrates how intrinsic inequalities and power relations constitute and reproduce informal economic practices throughout a circular rationale. Rather than a direct function of state weakness, informality in Kosovo is an effect of agents' engagement in knowledgeable and everyday practices. Agents' susceptibility contributes to the temporary fixing of meanings and doings that enable differentiations yet also interdependencies between relatively powerful and relatively powerless businesses. The article reflects on the implications of an intrinsic rationale for the politics of informality within peacebuilding operations.