Migrants invent informal market conditions rather than accept formal institutional offers.

Evidence

Later he had to give up photography after joining the army; he was put on a charge for spending too many weekends out of barracks. Despite the doubling of army pay after the 1966 coup and the benefits of being a regularly paid soldier, Atia was chronically indebted and looked back on his work as a weekend photographer with some nostalgia, as a time when he was free. Be that as it may, Atia’s enterprise was short-lived and unstable. He depended on the patronage of a headmistress and on his ability to step through a minefield of adolescent girls. Having failed to place his enterprise on a more durable basis, he fell back on a securely paid job. His willingness to invent the conditions of his participation in the market economy, rather than accept passively whatever its formal institutions had to offer, was typical of Frafra migrants. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2354

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the recurring theme of extralegal/private ordering as the reader has explored in the Milgrom law-merchant and diamond-bourse material.