Informal employment and general labour insecurity are now widely recognised as major concerns worldwide. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that approximately two billion people (61 % of the world’s employed population) work in the informal economy, with numbers expected to rise in 2020 due to COVID-19.

In spite of this, the capacity to address the problem of informal employment and vulnerability seems limited, especially in some regions of the world due, in large part, to the lack of regional specialists. The EU-funded LABOUR project has been designed to respond to this need and produce specialists on informal and precarious employment in Southeast Asia, where the phenomenon is particularly serious.