"The informal practices revealed in this book include emotion-driven exchanges (from gifts or favours to tribute for services), values-based practices of solidarity and belonging enacting multiple identities, interest-driven know-how (from informal welfare to informal employment and entrepreneurship, often not seen or appreciated as expertise), and power-driven forms of co-optation and control. The paradox – or not – of the invisibility of these informal practices is their ubiquity. Expertly practised by insiders but often hidden from outsiders, informal practices are, as this book shows, deeply rooted all over the world. Fostering informal ties with ‘godfathers’ in Montenegro, ‘dear brothers’ in Finland and ‘little cousins’ in Switzerland – known locally as kumstvo, Hyvä veli, and Vetterliwirtschaft – as well as Klüngel (solidarity) in Cologne, Germany, compadrazgo (reciprocity) in Chile, or blat (networks of favours) in Russia, can make a world of difference to your well-being. Yet just like family relations, social ties not only enable but also limit individual decisions, behaviour and rights, as is revealed in the entries on janteloven (aversion to individuality) in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, or krugovaia poruka (joint responsibility) in Russia and Europe. The Global Informality Project (GIP) assembles pioneering research into the grey areas of informality, known yet unarticulated, enabling yet constraining, moral to ‘us’ yet immoral to ‘them’, divisive and hard to measure or integrate into policy. While typically unmentioned in official discourse, these practices are deeply woven into the fabric of society and are as pervasive as the usage of the terms, or language games, associated with them: pulling strings in the UK, red envelopes in China, pot du vin in France, l’argent du carburant paid to customs officials in sub-Saharan Africa, coffee money (duit kopi) paid to traffic policemen in Malaysia, and many others (Blundo, Olivier de Sardan, 2007: 132). While they may be taken for granted and familiar, such practices can also be uncomfortable to discuss and difficult to study." (Preface, page vii-viii)