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Informal formality: tenantries, ejidos and family land

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2008

Jane Matthews Glenn
Jane Matthews Glenn*
Affiliation:
Professor, Faculty of Law and School of Urban Planning, and Member, Institute of Comparative Law, McGill University
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Abstract

Formality and informality in housing is a continuum, rather than an either/or proposition, with many examples along the continuum. This paper focuses on three examples of housing solutions – Barbados tenantries, Mexican ejidos and Saint Lucia family land – which are situated at the fulcrum of the continuum, at the point where it tips from formality to informality, and attempts to unravel their formal and informal elements. While the starting hypothesis was that each is informal from a public law point of view but formal from a private law one, closer examination suggests that their private law aspects are more nuanced than first appeared.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , June 2008 , pp. 135 - 148
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2008

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