In Portugal, South Asians are a well-settled community in general, although some still live in deprived conditions. In the context of the Hindu families living in Portugal, a relatively large number of them live in a so-called shanty town on Lisbon’s outskirts which was until recently subject to a resettlement process. Though informal economy is not restricted to deprived housing dwellers, some families living in these conditions are seduced by the informal sector in an attempt to boost their incomes. Following recent ethnographic evidence, this paper explores specific types of informal income of Hindu Portuguese families, namely samosas and saris made at home for retail sale. Outside the control of the formal system, the informal labour market is not clearly understood by the local authorities who managed the neighbourhood resettlement process. Issues concerning the Hindu community's informal economy at Quinta da Vitória are discussed in the paper in the light of Laguerre's (1994) conceptualization of the ‘informal city’, among other more recent approaches.

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Informal economies, Housing rights, Housing, PER, Lisbon

• Sociology - Social Sciences
• Social and Economic Geography - Social Sciences