An informal sphere: "The pirate taxi" drivers

Some part of economy is outside of formal market in Turkey. This reality is required to take into consideration that informal economy is very part of our economic life and needed to be studied.

Transportation in the city with a taxi is one of these spheres and highly visible in Istanbul. It has some particular features in the market. Informal economy is constructed or regulated socially with survival strategic behaviors, social network and interest as formal economy is. In this paper firstly we try to understand which dynamics of economy –such as economic crises, poverty, social relationships, and internal migration or just interests- affect the emergence of actors’ informal transportation which is called “pirate” taxi drivers. Secondly we emphasize how the pirate drivers survive in this an unsafe and a secret sphere. Moving from with these two points, the resources –financial capital, physical capital, social capital and skills- to access the informal market of taxi used by drivers will be illustrated.

We used first the participant observer techniques to obtain an extensive fieldnotes and some questions were directed to the actors in the natural flow of daily life as a costumer. These observations lasted between February and December 2010. The actors are both formal and informal taxi drivers. Later on five informal and five formal cabstands were selected for depth interviews with 20 drivers from different part of Istanbul. In these interviews using the semi-structured question form, open-ended questions were directed to the drivers to illuminate their economic and social life. The pirate taxi drivers participate to the informal spheres both rational and survival reasons. At the same time their social networks play an essential role to participate in this sphere.