Mapping the Field: Investigating the Literature on Informality and COVID-19 Pandemic Through a Text Analysis Approach

The paper aims to examine the research area of informality with its multiple forms and patterns in the context of COVID-19 crisis exploring the quality of the main publications in the field using text analysis. In order to do that, more than 37 publications from Web of Science, covering the pandemic period 2020–2021, have been extracted. The empirical findings revealed that the publications with the most unique terms is the Informality and the Infrastructures of Inclusion: An Introduction by K. Meagher, which focuses on a variety of inclusive infrastructures that connect disadvantaged communities to work, services, and civic engagement, such as institutional capacity, career connections, and services for challenging populations. Also, topic modeling findings recommended the presence of three main clusters of topics covered by this area, such as: the first one identified by “police,” “informal,” “covid,” “pandemic,” and “policy”; the second one described in terms of “worker,” “undeclared,” “economy,” “employment,” and “covid” while the last one identified through “informal,” “social,” “covid,” “urban,” and “economic.”