This paper aims to promote greater discussion and debate on the implications and legitimacy of the current UK government policy approach that seeks to nurture voluntary activity by encouraging participation in voluntary groups (formal volunteering) and neglects the cultivation of one-to-one help...

The view that alternative retail channels (i.e., informal and/or second-hand modes of goods acquisition) are used out of economic necessity by disadvantaged consumers has been recently opposed by cultural theorists who instead read such channels in agency-orientated terms as places of fun,...

The starting point of this paper is that the shift from a producer to a consumer society necessitates that social exclusion is investigated not only in relation to production but also consumption. To do this, case study evidence from interviews with 350 households in rural England is reported....

Attempts to harness community self-help currently tend to follow the ‘third sector' route of developing existing community-based groups. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically this approach. Drawing upon case study evidence from rural England, existing community-based groups are...

A widely held belief is that as economies become more “advanced,” there is a natural and inevitable shift of economic activity from the informal to the formal sphere (herein referred to as the “formalization of work” thesis). Hence, the existence of supposedly “traditional” informal...

To evaluate the current role of the social economy and how it might be harnessed to supplement public and private sector provision, this article takes the issue of transport provision and examines it in the context of rural England. First, the nature of the rural transport problem in this nation...

The aim of this paper is to challenge the characterization of paid informal work as a form of employment based on exploitative relations that should be eradicated. Using empirical evidence gathered through structured interviews with 511 households in deprived and affluent neighborhoods in...

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...

The starting point of this paper is a recognition that the current deterrence approach towards underground work fails to recognize either the potential asset that enterprise and entrepreneurship in the underground economy represents in western economies or the desire of governments to transfer...

To evaluate the size of the underground sector, numerous measurement methods have been employed ranging from indirect to direct survey approaches. Evaluating critically the range of techniques available, this paper firstly highlights the growing appreciation that direct rather than indirect...