Living for the day’: informality, gender, and precarious work in the Sri Lankan apparel industry

Informality is highly prevalent in the Sri Lankan apparel industry in the Katunayake export processing zone where there has been a labour shortage since the 2010s (Ranasinghe et al. 2016). Against this shortage, informal labour plays a key role in guaranteeing uninterrupted production in the free trade zones (Skanthakumar 2019). Yet, the implications on informal women workers are often overlooked by industry stakeholders, which became particularly evident during the COVID19 pandemic. I give visibility to informal labour and argue that the way women workers experience informal labour in the industry is collectively conditioned by socio-cultural norms, capitalist labour control strategies, and regulatory gaps.