Poverty and exclusion must not be the price to pay for economic growth and wellbeing. For example, as early as 1997 France’s Commissariat general du Plan developed a definition of social cohesion: ‘social cohesion is a set of social processes that help instil in individuals the sense of belonging to the same community and the feeling that they are recognised as members of that community’ (quoted in Jenson, 1998: 4). The social processes considered by the French government over the last decade have been primarily those usually treated under the heading of social exclusion, poverty and inequality, and the methods proposed involve larger and/or redesigned social policies and programmes. One result of the social and economic changes experienced by the countries of Latin America over the last decades has been an even larger informal sector and the concomitant limited nature of social protection coverage. The starting-point is the acknowledgement of informal-sector workers’ economic and social rights, so that they may be in a position to meet the obligations imposed by entry into the formal sector. Efforts should also be made gradually to introduce a minimum threshold of labour rights for informal-sector workers, as well as fiscal measures to promote them.