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...

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate the prevalence in Europe of a so far little discussed wage practice in which employers pay their declared employees two wages, one declared and the other an undeclared (“envelope”) wage. Design/methodology/approach – To evaluate the pervasiveness of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the nature of undeclared work in South East Europe and the rest of the European Union and in doing so, to evaluate critically the validity of depicting the character of undeclared work as being the same everywhere....

This paper argues that by shackling the future of work to a vision of full employment, alternative futures are closed off. At present, employment creation is seen as the sole route out of poverty. Here, however, we reveal that a complementary additional pathway is to help people to help...

Purpose – Since the late 1980s, much attention has been afforded to the notion of social exclusion and how governments might address this problem. One such solution has been the encouragement of self employment amongst those considered to be socially excluded with the aim of creating...