Migration, Geographies of Marginality
and Informality—Impacts on Upper and
Lower Ends of Urban Systems in the
North and South


H. S. Geyer a , H. S. Geyer Jr. a & D. J. Du Plessis a
a Centre for Regional and Urban Innovation and Statistical
Exploration (CRUISE) , University of Stellenbosch , South Africa
Published online: 17 Sep 2012.

European Planning Studies, 2013
Vol. 21, No. 3, 411–431, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2012.716248


ABSTRACT Since the onset of post-industrialism, the research focus in the developed world has
increasingly shifted to the role of the information and communication technology, knowledge
workers and the creative sector in the global economy. It has led to what could be described as
an iceberg approach to economic research. In this approach, the focus is primarily on what
happens in the part of the global economic iceberg above the waterline—the “clean”, “fastmoving”,
“technologically advanced” elements of the global economy. However another element
of the global economy, the informal sector, is growing at an alarming rate in cities in both the
developed and developing worlds. These activities are unobtrusively operating in a part of the
iceberg below the waterline that receives relatively little attention from the research community.
The purposes of this paper are to demonstrate how the information networks created in the
iceberg above the waterline are being used by a growing section of the society in the developing
world in order to reach first-world destinations. It shows how informality is changing the urban
landscape in first-world cities where large concentrations of non-Western populations occur. The
paper then shifts its attention to the overwhelmingly informally driven economies of African cities
and outlines the inappropriateness of standard economic measures to accurately portray
conditions there.