Informal Workers, Vulnerability and Human Rights: An Inter-American Story

Informality is a defining feature of labour markets in Latin America and the Caribbean, where nearly half of the workforce remains excluded from formal protections. Traditional labour law, largely modelled on frameworks from the Global North, has proven ill-suited to address this structural reality. Against this backdrop, the Inter-American System of Human Rights (IASHR) may offer an alternative rights-based framework capable of recognising informal workers as subjects of protection beyond contractual employment relations. This article examines whether the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) has moved towards recognising informal workers as a ‘vulnerable group’, a status that would entail specific obligations on States Parties. Drawing on the Court’s evolving and recent jurisprudence on economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights, the analysis demonstrates that whilst the Court has acknowledged informality as an aggravating factor, it has yet to conceptualise informal workers as a distinct category of vulnerability. By engaging with the doctrinal trajectory of transformative constitutionalism in Latin America, the article situates informality within broader debates on labour rights as human rights, and calls for a more systematic recognition of informal workers within the Court’s jurisprudence.