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The study aimed to identify ways of strengthening trade union organization amongst peripheral workers in micro and small enterprises (MSEs) through a mapping exercise in nine countries drawn predominantly from the Global South, the periphery of the global economy. The paper identifies four main responses by trade unions to non-standard employees; indifference, attempts at extending existing forms of representation, resistance to non-standard employment and most significantly, the creation of specific kinds of representation and protection for the new forms of employment. We conclude that mapping on its own is a limited tool in recruiting new union members amongst peripheral workers. However, new institutional actors are filling the vacuum created by the failure of traditional industrial relations actors to respond to the representation gap.