Summary (English)

This article posits that there is no a priori reason that industrial upgrading and market expansion leads to greater social protection or better regulation. The author asks three questions and attempts a conceptual framework for institutions and their broader spatial evolution. A firm’s regional risk ecology ties in insightful ways for primary-secondary workers, insider-outsiders, and to the emergence of social protection. The author proposes a typology of place, work, and work-place institutions that mitigate risks and mediate costs. Industrial upgrading is a work-place based process; evolution of “informality”, wider social protection, and labour regulations can be assessed accordingly.