The first comprehensive study of Latin America's overlooked garment economy, drawing on cutting-edge fieldwork in sweatshops, informal marketplaces, and cross-border trade routes. 

The Other Garment Industry presents an economic, social, and political phenomenon in Latin America, overlooked in social sciences literature, by introducing a new perspective in the discussion about garment production and distribution. It focuses on three pillars of this economy: downstream entrepreneurs, informal garment-oriented marketplaces, and extended routes of national and regional trade.

Matias Dewey is associate professor of Latin American Studies at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. 

List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors
Acknowledgements

1 Uncovering a regional system of informal garment provision: an introduction
Matías Dewey

Part I: Explaining low-priced fashion

2 Drivers of informality in the Latin American garment sector: regulation, compliance and law enforcement
Matías Dewey

Part II: The downstream sweatshop

3 Creative copying: modinha and the dynamics of innovation and imitation
Thalita Calíope and José Carlos Lázaro

4 The rise of entrepreneurship in Pernambuco’s informal garment marketplace: narratives, practices and history
Renata Milanês

5 Provincializing ethical and sustainable fashion: learning from Guatemala’s informal garment sector
Kedron Thomas

6 Cooperation in a neoliberal production landscape: Bolivian workers in Buenos Aires’ garment industry
Karlotta Jule Bahnsen

Part III: Garment-oriented marketplaces

7 ‘I’ve been coming to Brás for 30 years’: resilient sociotechnical infrastructures of production and trade in an enduring garment district
André Vereta-Nahoum

8 Taming informal market violence: clashes and structure in the making of La Salada and other gray marketplaces
Jacinto Cuvi and Javier Auyero

9 Constructing a marketplace: real estate business and government in Gamarra, Lima
Moisés K. Rojas

10 Governing informality: the case of La Cachina Fashion in Lima, Peru
Francesco Ginocchio

Part IV: Trading garments

11 Beyond global chains: informal wholesale clothing circuits and production in Argentina
Gustavo Ludmer

12 Trading garment at night: practices and aspirations in informal commerce
Felipe Rangel

13 Second-hand clothing in the style of Monterrey, Mexico
Efrén Sandoval

14 Never quite formal: growth and constraints of Korean wholesale enterprises in the Argentine garment industry
Jihye Kim

Index