Social exclusion is usually considered in relation to the world of work. Here, we consider it in relation to consumption. To do this, we introduce the notion of the ‘excluded consumer’. In order to understand who defines themselves as excluded from normal consumption practices and how, the...

In the light of high unemployment in deprived neighbourhoods, this paper considers whether community exchange is being used as a coping strategy. Examining its current magnitude and character as well as the barriers to participation in a particular deprived neighbourhood, this paper finds that...

Drawing inspiration from institutional theory, a small sub-stream of literature has proposed that participation in the informal economy arises from the lack of alignment of a society's formal institutions (i.e. its codified laws and regulations) with its informal institutions (i.e. the norms,...

This paper argues that the reliance of New Labour on a ‘social inclusion through employment' approach, especially in lower-income areas, is problematic. This is due to the significant gap between actual employment rates and a full-employment scenario in such areas, its uni-dimensional view...

This paper evaluates critically whether women‘s paid informal work is low-paid market-like work conducted for the purpose of economic gain. Drawing upon interviews with 400 households in UK lower-income urban neighbourhoods, we show that only a small segment of the paid informal work conducted...

Paid informal work has been conventionally viewed as a barrier to social inclusion. Conceived as exploitative low-paid employment conducted by marginalised populations for unscrupulous employers, such work has been considered to prevent social inclusion, in that it denies employees access to the...

Viewing undeclared work as market-like activity conducted for monetary gain, and participation as a rational economic decision, the widespread public policy response has been to seek to deter engagement in such work by ensuring that the expected cost of being caught and punished is greater than...

Informal employment has been variously explained as resulting from: economic under-development and a lack of modernisation (modernisation theory); high taxes and state interference in the free market (neo-liberal theory) or inadequate levels of state intervention to protect citizens (political...

The aim of this article is to evaluate the prevalence and distribution in the European Union of a little discussed illegitimate employment practice whereby employers pay their formal employees both an official declared salary and an undeclared ‘envelope' wage so as to evade the full tax and...