This paper contributes to a small but growing body of thought that has questioned the hegemony of capitalism by revealing the persistence of multifarious economic practices in everyday community economies. To further advance this school of thought, first, a conceptual framework is developed to...

PurposeThis paper evaluates critically the validity of rival theorisations of the hidden economy that variously read this sector as a leftover from some previous era, a by-product of a new emergent form of capitalism, a complement to formal employment or an alternative to the formal economy....

This paper evaluates critically the competing explanations for the persistence and growth of informal employment in contemporary societies. These interpret the normality of informality either through a structuralist lens as arising out of “exclusion” from state benefits and the circuits of...

This paper evaluates critically competing explanations for participation in undeclared work that either read engagement through a structuralist lens as driven by ‘exclusion' from state benefits and the circuits of the modern economy or through a neo-liberal and/or post-structuralist lens as...

The Soviet Union's collapse brought economic uncertainty to many Ukrainians. Approximately 20 percent of the population, 10 million people, currently survive on incomes below the state-set subsistence minimum figure. Given the unrealistic nature of this state-produced definition, “poverty”...

This paper evaluates critically the conventional hierarchical representation of the formal/informal employment dualism, which depicts formal employment as extensive and positively contributing to economic development and social cohesion, and the separate realm of informal employment as weaker,...

Despite the growing recognition that many entrepreneurs conduct some or all of their trade off-the-books, few have evaluated whether there are variations in the rationales of men and women engaging in this shadow enterprise culture. Reporting face-to-face interviews with 331 entrepreneurs in...

PurposeRecently when studying mainstream (legitimate) entrepreneurs, the distinction between ‘necessity-driven' entrepreneurs pushed into entrepreneurship because other options for work are absent or unsatisfactory, and ‘opportunity-driven' entrepreneurs pulled into entrepreneurship to...

Utilising de Certeau's concepts of daily life and his delineation between strategies and tactics as everyday practices this paper examines the role of informal economies in post- Ukraine. Based on 700 household surveys and seventy-five in-depth interviews, conducted in three Ukrainian cities,...

Purpose – This article explores the criminal workplace activities of both employers and employees in Ukrainian enterprises. It challenges traditional definitions of corruption and suggests that the practices that can be observed fit into the category of organised crime because of the country's...