Beyond Informality is a “trilingual ethnography” of the border economy of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay, specifically examining the role of diverse Chinese migrants in facilitating and directing the flow of imported, smuggled or counterfeit goods between Ciudad del Este and Sao Paolo in Brazil. Based on 12 years of ethnographic cross-border research with diverse key actors, Douglas de Toledo Piza’s book contributes to a steadily growing number of scholars attending carefully to the diverse manifestations of “global China” in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the 21st century, China’s increasing economic, political and social presence in the region has been evident and can take the form of large infrastructural projects, Chinese state-led investments in key strategic national sectors, retail shops, Chinese restaurants and supermarkets. While some welcome China’s growing economic investment for its potential to spur development, others remain sceptical and raise concerns about the environmental impact of infrastructure projects and the possible ideological or political conditions tied to such investments. Public discussions tend still to conflate diverse Chinese actors, and speculative and conspiratorial discourses circulate widely that link not only Chinese migrants and businesses to forms of illegality but also suggest that they are directly connected to or funded by the People’s Republic of China state and the Chinese Communist Party. Together, by framing Chinese migrants as illegitimate actors and residents in local territories, these discourses effectively homogenize and dehumanize Chinese migrants by foreclosing the possibility of their agency.

Beyond Informality offers a significant and nuanced intervention in this conversation. Through highlighting the diverse range of Chinese migrants in Ciudad del Este (from entrepreneurs with capital to vendors and intermediaries), Piza consistently emphasizes that “Chinese migrants” include precarious street vendors and undocumented migrants as well as long-term permanent residents in Paraguay or Brazilian citizens with important ties to diasporic associations and local Chinese governments. Rather than asking how Chinese migrants manage to operate in the “informal” or illicit economy, Piza makes two main arguments throughout the book. The first is that global structural inequalities push migrants into contexts of informality, where practices of “informality” or “illegality” can be read as their strategic responses to forms of marginalization and exploitation. Through the concept of “capture by illegality,” he convincingly shows that illegality, irregularity and informal practices are integral to processes of wealth accumulation and forms of governance by the state, rather than simply exceptions to formal economy.

Second, he challenges the dichotomies of legal and illegal, formal and informal, by showing “the uneven application of legality in popular markets enables informality” (p. 25). Special economic zones where special trading rights are allowed for some actors and not others are exemplary cases where powerful private interests can, through the creation of “exceptional measures” allow previously illegal behaviour or practices to be considered legal for certain exclusive individuals or companies. Building on Foucault’s theory of illegalisms, Piza demonstrates that legality is a product of “arbitrary officialness” and the law is often disproportionately used to further exploit the poor and enable those in power to further their processes of accumulation through legally capturing the wealth that illegally circulates in the popular markets.

Piza draws from an impressive range of sources for this research. In addition to 12 years of fieldwork (between 2012 to 2024) in Portuguese, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese in Ciudad del Este, Asunción and Sao Paolo, he also draws on archival material and policy documents on key issues such as tariffs and taxes, street vending regulation, smuggling and human trafficking. His long-term research enables him to include and follow the fates and journeys of ordinary street vendors such as “Johnny Fong” whose stall in a popular market in Sao Paolo was demolished in order for developers to expand and privatize its infrastructure to promote “shopping tourism” and thus capture the wealth that had been illegally circulating in the popular markets or “informal” economy.

Piza takes great care to contextualize historically and transnationally the establishment of Ciudad de Este and the rise and fall of its border economy in relation to the flourishing popular markets of Sao Paolo. Each chapter deals with one aspect of the interconnected puzzle: the state, the market, diaspora associations, Chinese vendors. However, I would have appreciated more detail and attention to the non-Chinese actors of the popular markets, particularly the other migrant or non-migrant street vendors who work alongside the Chinese vendors. The issue of inter-ethnic conviviality or conflict seems to be an obvious topic that is avoided, given how the book opens with a statement about general discontent in Brazilian society about the “Chinese mafia” taking over the informal economy. I was left wondering about the everyday social relations within the popular markets described. While Piza mentions many historical and contemporary migrant groups that participate and are present in these markets, his focus on the experiences and concerns of Chinese vendors raises questions about how other migrant or precarious vendors may experience the markets and forms of (il)legality differently according to their social positions and distance or proximity to relevant diasporic associations.

Beyond Informality will be of interest to a broad academic audience, including students and instructors in Chinese studies, global studies, migration and border studies, and economic anthropology or sociology. Its use of multiple archival sources and grounded, long-term ethnographic fieldwork makes the book particularly valuable for those seeking thoughtful, nuanced perspectives on global China, especially in the context of the role of Chinese migrants in popular economies of the so-called “Global South.”