Introduction
Economic transformation has had a profound effect on the nature of work. Every developed country has witnessed the rise in low-paid work, in part-time and flexible employment (voluntary and involuntary) and in the growth of the informal economy (Gans, Reference Gans and Mingione1996). The decline of male-dominated employment in the manufacturing and extractive industries combined with the growth of service sector work has been associated with the growing ‘feminisation’ of the labour force. These developments combined with other important social changes are: ‘proving a potent challenge to traditional notions of men's place as the key breadwinner and to the significance of employment as the key indicator of masculine status and social worth’ (McDowell, Reference McDowell2003: 29).
Deindustrialisation has also generated new forms of employment-centred poverty. Sassen (Reference Sassen and Mingione1996) has, for example, shown that it has polarised labour markets between ‘knowledge and information intensive’ and ‘labour intense and low productivity’ sectors. Lash and Urry (Reference Lash and Urry1994) argue that the British economy has been a prodigious creator of ‘junk jobs’ in occupations such as cleaning, fast food and bar work. They are highly routinised and subject to surveillance where employees often have to learn and repeat standardised scripts in their interaction with customers. It is low-level service jobs that present the most accessible route into the labour market for many working-class men.
Yet the skills required are fundamentally different from those demanded for manufacturing employment. Hogarth and Wilson (Reference Hogarth and Wilson2001) have shown that the demand for physical skills has been superseded by the requirement for interpersonal and customer handling skills. This is because the service sector involves the exchange of information and is dependant on a social relationship between the producer and consumer of the service (McDowell, Reference McDowell2003). ‘Interactive service work’ makes use of the workers’ personalities and emotions as well as their physical and intellectual capacities. Consequently, the embodied performance is part of the ‘product’ that is ‘sold’ to the customers (Lash and Urry, Reference Lash and Urry1994). Tyler and Taylor (Reference Tyler and Taylor1998) have shown that this is a gendered form of labour. They argue that women's domination of these jobs represents the ‘commodification of sexual difference’, as the perceived gender-specific skills of women are central to their employment and the service being provided.
The growth of the informal economy has been another key development. Informal work is defined as the paid production and sale of goods and services which are unregistered by or hidden from the state for tax and/or benefit purposes but which are legal in all other respects (Evans et al., Reference Evans, Syrett and Williams2006). It excludes illegal economic activity (e.g. drug trafficking) and informal unpaid work (self provisioning and mutual aid). Sassen (Reference Sassen, Portes, Castells and Benton1991, Reference Sassen and Mingione1996) has argued that it has grown in western societies as a reaction to globalisation. This has heightened competitive pressures which has led to downsizing, rationalisation, sub-contracting and a growth of low-paid work, in part-time and flexible employment and the informal economy. Pfau-Effinger (Reference Pfau-Effinger2003) has highlighted the role played by social policies, labour market and tax policies and cultural factors.
Informal work may be concentrated amongst ‘marginalised’ populations who undertake it out of economic necessity (Castells and Portes, Reference Castells, Portes, Portes, Castell and Benton1989; ILO 2002). Several UK studies have explored how it operates within the lives of deprived residents. Leonard's (Reference Leonard1998) research on the Newbury estate in Belfast found that 49% of unemployed men and 27% of economically inactive women were currently undertaking informal work. Smith (Reference Smith2005) also found widespread participation in undeclared employment among St Helier estate residents in London. However, such work was usually intermittent and was more commonly used to supplement formal wages. Williams (Reference Williams2004) conducted 861 face-to-face interviews (including 100 with Manor residents) in 11 localities representing deprived and affluent communities between 1998 and 2001. He concluded that the vast majority of such work was not conducted for profit but was likened to a ‘moral economy’ of paid favours between friends, kin and neighbours. MacDonald's (Reference MacDonald1994) study of benefit fraud (‘fiddly jobs’) in Cleveland has identified the importance of social networks in determining access to such opportunities. He concluded that those ‘who did not live a public life on the streets and in the pubs of particular estates, but instead lived a life of isolation, boredom and home-centred day-to-day tedium became excluded from avenues into fiddly work’ (MacDonald, Reference MacDonald1994: 525).
Williams (Reference Williams2008) refers to the belief that informal work is emblematic of economically marginalised groups as the ‘marginality thesis’. However, Pahl (Reference Pahl1984) proposed that the formally employed were in the best position to participate in the informal economy due to their contacts and resources. Similarly, Nelson and Smith (Reference Nelson and Smith1999) found that households with multiple earners in decent jobs were often those who undertook unofficial economic activities in Vermont. Researchers have found that relatively affluent populations may conduct greater amounts of such work (Williams, Reference Williams2004). Evans et al. (Reference Evans, Syrett and Williams2006: 51) conclude that: ‘it is a myth that paid informal work is more prevalent in deprived neighbourhoods . . . But what paid informal work goes on in deprived neighbourhoods is of relatively more importance . . . as a means of coping with deprivation.’ This paper considers whether it has also become an important way for some working-class men to express their identity.
Informal work and identity: previous research
There are other dimensions of identity but the focus here is on how men define themselves as workers and how they present themselves to others through informal paid work. Most research has focussed on the possible financial rewards of informal work. However, a small number of US studies have focused on identity formation. Snow and Anderson (Reference Snow and Anderson1987) considered homeless street people in Austin, Texas and concluded that the attempt to carve out self-worth is important to those situated on the margins of society because it enables them to retain a sense of self. Mental and jotted notes were made in the field which were supplemented by taped life-history interviews with six individuals. The focus was on the verbal construction and assertion of personal identities which they referred to as ‘identity talk’. Three generic patterns of identity talk were identified: ‘distancing’; ‘embracement’ and ‘fictive storytelling’.
Distancing is the attempt to disassociate oneself from roles, associations and institutions that imply social identities inconsistent with their actual or desired self-conceptions. Snow and Anderson (Reference Snow and Anderson1987) found that most identity talk took the form of distancing from other homeless individuals and institutions. Role distancing was most evident in day labour occupations (e.g. dishwashing), where low wages and status were the norm. They found that turning down such work functioned as a means of social identity disavowal on the one hand, and personal identity assertion on the other. This was especially the case for those individuals for whom such work was a permanent feature of their lives.
Embracement was the second form of identity talk engaged in by the homeless. This is the acceptance of and attachment to the social identity associated with a role, set of relationships or particular ideology. Role embracement was the most conspicuous kind encountered by the researchers. This typically manifested itself in the avowal and acceptance of street identities such as ‘tramp’. Associational embracement entailed reference to oneself as a friend or an individual who acknowledges the norm of reciprocity. An example was those individuals who willingly shared limited resources such as alcohol. Anderson (Reference Anderson1976) also found that this form of embracement figured prominently in the identity talk of black street corner men.
Fictive storytelling is the narration of stories about one's past, present or future experiences and accomplishments that have a fictitious character. They distinguished between embellishment and fantasizing. The most common form of embellished storytelling tended to be associated with exaggerated claims of past or current wages, whereas spoken fantasies involved future-oriented fabrications about oneself and were generally organised around money, material possessions and the opposite sex.
Gowan (Reference Gowan1997) conducted ethnographic work with San Francisco's homeless garbage recyclers. The typical recycler was found to be male with a substantial history of stable blue-collar employment, aged in his 30s or 40s, most often African-American. The growth of garbage recycling had taken place in a context of the loss of California's industrial jobs and the contraction of welfare support. Blue-collar workers were unable to access interactive service work because: ‘This kind of life history tends to produce a man who is either uncomfortable or inexperienced with using their personality for direct economic gain’ (Gowan, Reference Gowan1997: 175). Consequently, it had become an important subsistence strategy for those caught between long-term unemployment and the contraction of welfare benefits.
This study shows that people use marginal forms of employment simultaneously as a way to meet financial needs and sustain or reconfigure their identity. Garbage recycling was low paid, highly stigmatised and exhausting, yet many were enthusiastic about their work. This paradox was explained by the men's ability to use informal work to combat hostile images of the homeless and differentiate themselves from ‘winos’. ‘Rejecting both the criminality and insanity attributed to them by the exclusion discourse and the feminising picture of pathetic incompetence and vulnerability created by the social welfare discourse, recyclers aggressively assert their normality, hard work, competence and self-sufficiency’ (Gowan, Reference Gowan1997: 172).
Snyder (Reference Snyder2003) used Snow and Anderson's (Reference Snow and Anderson1987) conceptual framework to consider how informal economy workers in New York's East Village created personal identities. She proposed a fourfold typology of informal labour market participant:
• ‘Entrepreneurs’ are highly dependent on their informal work financially and as a way to assert their work identity.
• ‘Occupiers’ are highly dependant on informal work as a financial resource, but not as a source of work identity.
• ‘Avocationalists’ are engaged in informal work to pursue an outside passion, the money is incidental.
• ‘Allowance Seekers’ do not rely on informal activity as either a financial or an identity resource.
‘Many respondents cite as one benefit of their informal job the ability to mould their work environment to fit their sense of who they are . . . Work gives many an identity outlet’ (Snyder, Reference Snyder2003: 302). However, it was acknowledged that the social status of work can be devalued when it occurs in the informal economy. The relevance to the present article is limited by the focus on a group of well-educated informal workers. Snyder (Reference Snyder2003: 304) acknowledges that: ‘Groups that lack these resources and opportunities may be limited in the ability to create such beneficial informal work environments.’ The present research considers how a group lacking resources engages with informal work.
The present research
The nature and scale of informal economic activity is rooted in the specificities of particular neighbourhoods, the characteristics of the local population and labour market and the insertion of the neighbourhood within wider economy (Evans et al., Reference Evans, Syrett and Williams2006). The Manor estate was built in the 1920s to accommodate Sheffield's growing industrial workforce. During 1983, the Sheffield Morning Telegraph newspaper published a series of features exploring the impact of industrial decline on the estate. They found a community being ‘overwhelmed’ and ‘demoralised’ by the scale and speed of job losses. A resident of 28 years is quoted as saying that: ‘the emergence of mass unemployment over the last few years has been a major factor in the deterioration of the estate’ (quoted in Holloway, Reference Holloway1983). During this period, the Manor was identified as one of the city's worst areas of poverty (City of Sheffield Metropolitan District Council, 1983). It became a ‘sink estate’ acquiring a national reputation for drugs and violence.
During April-May 2007, 15 in-depth interviews were conducted by the author with residents to explore their labour market experiences. Participation in informal work was an important line of enquiry given the view that such work may be concentrated amongst marginalised populations. The sample was procured by Jobnet, a community enterprise that helps local residents into jobs and training. Interviews took place on the estate in a converted shop and lasted up to 1.5 hours. Many of the interviews were tape recorded and fully transcribed, but where the respondent indicated that they were uncomfortable with this, notes were taken instead.
Haylett (Reference Haylett2001) suggests that poor white council estate residents have been rendered ‘illegitimate subjects’ of study, symbolic of backwardness within a national discourse of progressive British multiculturalism. The interviewees included seven males and eight females and were aged between 18 and 50 years. Twelve described their ethnic origin as ‘White British’ and most had spent all or most of their lives on the estate. All were out of work at the time of interview. Most had no qualifications and the available labour market opportunities were low skilled, low paid and insecure. Almost a half of those interviewed had undertaken formal work during the past five years. Most had worked in service sector posts, such as shop assistants, bar supervisor and office assistant. Another had been employed as a fork-lift truck driver.
A third of those interviewed had undertaken informal work. This is surprising given that the official view is that the informal economy is emblematic of the estate (Jobcentre Plus, 2003). Pahl was told similar stories prior to his research on the Isle of Sheppey, only to find that the island was not a ‘seething centre of fiddles’ (Reference Pahl1984:137). Participants undertook a variety of informal jobs including construction, painting and decorating, working in public houses, erecting fairground rides and gardening. The length of time spent in the informal economy ranged from just a few weeks to over seven years. Similarly, levels of involvement ranged from a few hours to more than 60 hours per week. A prime reason for undertaking informal work was for financial reasons. ‘It just helps at the time when you've got nowt basically’ (21-year-old male). Some mentioned the well being of children. ‘I do most of it at Christmas to get presents and stuff like that . . . it's just stuff you have to do isn't it?’ (26-year-old male)
Four of the five individuals working ‘off-the-books’ were male, which reflects their marginal position in the formal labour market. Long-term unemployment disproportionately affects the manual working class and, in particular, non-skilled manual workers (Gallie, Reference Gallie1994). These are precisely the groups that the Manor was built to accommodate. It may also be a legacy of an enduring sexual division of labour between work and family life. Most men still subscribed to the ‘male breadwinner’ role. The experience of long-term unemployment may have reinforced these traditional roles (Gallie, Reference Gallie2004). Campbell (Reference Campbell1993) has argued that long-term unemployment forces men to share domestic space with women, but that difference is re-asserted by their refusal to create a democratic domesticity.
This research found that informal work was undertaken by:
• Middle-aged men with previously stable employment histories;
• young men caught in a cycle of precarious employment and worklessness.
Middle-aged men: using informal work to demonstrate their self-sufficiency and work ethic
Four of the 15 interviewees had previously stable employment histories that had been transformed by redundancy. All had been unable to find formal work for at least five years. Most were middle-aged males and had worked in manufacturing (cutlery, surgical instrument manufacture, etc.) and on the railways. They were all continuing to look for similar work. A 42-year-old explained: ‘I'd like some factory work but there are no factories left in Sheffield is there?’ Long-term unemployment had often led to other problems, such as marriage break-up, mental ill-health and loss of home. Two of these individuals had responded to their bleak prospects by working informally.
A 50-year-old male had become involved in the informal economy following redundancy. He began to drink heavily and lost his home in 2002. He was subsequently diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and claimed Incapacity Benefit. This individual has spent much of the last six years working in public houses and even lived in one so that he could fulfil his duties. ‘A lot of it was working in public houses, cellar work and such like . . . I got that work with it being my local.’ He was wary of becoming trapped in the informal sector. ‘I would say you could get trapped in working for cash in hand, because it is so much easier, and you can drift from one day to the next without ever being recognised as having a job which is on the books.’ A lack of progression was another concern. ‘It's not like working in Dixon's and working your way up from shop assistant to store manager.’
A 49-year-old male had regular employment since leaving school in 1974. He initially worked on the railways until its privatisation in 1979. Following redundancy, he found work in a surgical instrument manufacturer. He was made redundant again in 2000. This led to the break up of his marriage and worsening mental health. ‘There's something wrong with my nerves, it's something I've had all my life. But since the last seven years since I was made redundant I don't know what to do.’ The interviewee now lives with his elderly mother, claims Jobseekers Allowance and regularly undertakes informal gardening work to supplement his benefit. ‘I get £50 a week [benefit] so I do only for family and friends just some gardening, just now and again . . . cut the grass and cut the privet . . . you don't make much money yourself.’ This type of informal work may be important for the local community because it allows those with limited financial resources to access ‘cheap’ services.
These interviewees explicitly recognised that paid work was important for their personal identity and status. The 49-year-old male asserted: ‘The benefits of working are carrying on with self-esteem and earning enough money.’ The social benefits of work were particularly important given the stigmatised social position of these individuals. In both cases redundancy had led to other problems, such as alcoholism and mental ill-health. ‘I want to be seen as somebody who goes to work and I want to have the satisfaction of using the abilities that I have got because I'm by no means a cabbage’ (50-year-old male). It also helped to combat the social isolation sometimes associated with long-term unemployment. ‘In the licensing trade of course you get to know customers, you get to know the licensees, you get to know the area managers and other people that actually run the business’ (50-year-old male). Voluntary work was not seen as conferring these benefits.
Informal work was useful at maintaining their identity, but was not acting as a bridge to service sector jobs. This echoes the findings of Nixon's (Reference Nixon2006) study of unemployed men in Manchester, which found that they were not reconstructing their identities but were continuing to seek male-dominated, low-skilled manual jobs. He concluded that customer service jobs ‘required the young men to deny themselves, to be passive and socially acceptable, to cover up their class and background, their feelings and emotions, their accents, their behaviour’ (Nixon, Reference Nixon2006: 214).
These interviewees were using informal work to enact cherished principles, such as independence and self-sufficiency. They were acutely uncomfortable with the thought that others may see them as being redundant and reliant on benefits. Furthermore, they drew upon such principles to differentiate themselves from others. Associational distancing was much in evidence. One interviewee felt that many young residents lacked the necessary work ethic and questioned their right to social housing. ‘Council housing should be there for those that have worked all their lives. They [not young tenants] should be nannied by the state’. Ravetz (Reference Ravetz2001) has drawn attention to the tensions that often exist between older and younger council house tenants. Watt (Reference Watt2006) has also shown that intra-class distinctions between the ‘rough’ and ‘respectable’ have a long historical pedigree in English working-class neighbourhoods.
Another felt alienated by the changing tenant composition of the estate. ‘They split it [community] up in the 80's when they developed the houses and they put the people back, that community was nearly destroyed . . . This community has changed. There are a lot of different people, different colours. I still know a few people from way back.’ Ravetz (Reference Ravetz2001) has shown that council estate residents are particularly prone to articulate ‘narratives of urban decline’. Blokland (Reference Blokland2003) argues that such narratives are often tinged with nostalgia for a ‘lost community’.
Fictive storytelling was also a feature of these interviews. When asked about his future employment plans, the 50-year-old replied: ‘I'd like some sort of work that involves perhaps writing. I don't mean as an author . . . the kind of business that involves a lot of the use of the English language such as working in a Lawyers office.’ The 49-year-old replied: ‘I'd love to work in the theatre. I am also very interested in history and geography and looking back at the history of Sheffield.’
Young men: using informal work to negotiate the post-industrial labour market
Four of the 15 respondents were caught in a cycle of low-paid insecure employment and worklessness. They were aged between their late teens to mid-twenties and had between three and five formal jobs over the past five years. All worked in the service sector in occupations such as bar work, catering and retail. Most reported poor school experiences and had been desperate to leave and gain some financial independence. However, many had no clear direction and their subsequent experiences of work were largely unsatisfying and exploitative. Three of these individuals had worked informally.
A 21-year-old male was living with his girlfriend and their baby. He had left school aged just 14 years and exhibited a ‘careerless’ orientation to work (Wallace, Reference Wallace1987). When asked about the work he was after he replied: ‘Bar staffing, kitchen or labouring, anything really’. He'd had a succession of short-term formal jobs, including working in a local butchers shop, a retail market and as a bar supervisor. He was made redundant from his last formal job just prior to Christmas 2006. ‘They [employers] look at how many jobs I've had since I left school and think he can't keep a job down. So like most of them I have either been laid off or they have gone into liquidation.’ He had also served a one-year prison sentence and undertook cash-in-hand work during periods of unemployment to make ends meet. ‘The advantages are just extra income actually. I don't like doing it because if I get caught, that's my benefit stopped.’
A 26-year-old male was living with the mother of his second child. He too had found school an alienating experience and had very low expectations. When asked about the advantages of working he replied: ‘Just earning money . . . and it's better than being sat at home’. He went on: ‘I've not got many qualifications so when I go out and work, it's for minimum wage.’ During the past five years he'd had formal jobs repairing sunbeds, working in a local off-license and driving fork-lift trucks at a major DIY store. He'd left his last job after three months following a disagreement. Informal work was again undertaken during periods of worklessness to help make ends meet. He elaborated: ‘I was just doing odd decorating jobs for friends, or you know laying of floors you know stuff like that . . . you get a bit of a return for it.’
In contrast to the older men, these individuals did not relate to their work. It was a means to an end. Consequently, the irregularity of informal work was seen as a weakness: ‘It's just not regular is it, it's not something that you can rely on, you're not recognised are you?’ (26-year-old male). It was often viewed as a stop-gap measure until something better turned up. ‘I'm trying my best to find a [formal] job but I've got to try and do something in the meantime’ (21-year-old male). However, there was an awareness that undertaking such work might hinder the search for formal employment. The 21-year-old noted, for example, that: ‘You can't put it down on your CV.’ These young men had little experience of working in manufacturing and had held several service sector jobs. Connell (Reference Connell1995) has developed the concept of ‘protest masculinity’ to characterise the way in which economically marginal young men relate to the labour market. Violence, school resistance, crime, heavy drug/alcohol use and occasional labour were found to be markers of ‘protest masculinity’. From the individual's point of view, work is often alienating and any job is interchangeable with another.
Associational distancing from institutions such as Jobcentre Plus that are responsible for policing benefit entitlement was a pronounced feature of these interviews. The 21-year-old reported: ‘It's just a job that I really want not a job that I'm just told [by the Jobcentre] I've got to do.’ Similarly, when asked how he sought formal work the 26-year-old replied: ‘Recently my last two jobs have just been like job centre, looking in the paper, stuff like that, not going and getting advice from the job centre just going and looking at the job boards.’ More generally, some dismay was expressed at the perceived iniquities of the benefits system. ‘We both work but we haven't got a penny . . . and there are people out there who don't work, are on social and do alright’ (26-year-old male).
Attitudes towards the local community were mixed. On the one hand, a degree of associational embracement was evident. The 21-year-old, for example, complained that employers discriminated against local residents but took some pride in the tough reputation of the estate. ‘I was talking to the rest of people [former work colleagues] and they were from the posh end, and they asked me where I'm from and I'm like Manor, and they are like “Oh its right hard up there, you have to have big massive dogs or else your house gets burgled.”’ The 26-year-old also complained about being stereotyped but also went on to say: ‘I've lived on the Manor my entire life don't get me wrong not everywhere is perfect but I do reckon there are a lot of nicer places than the Manor. I couldn't even let my kid out on the street because of all the kids.’
Conclusions
Theories of reflexive modernity (Beck, Reference Beck1992; Giddens, Reference Giddens1991) suggest that work has lost its status as the ‘master identity’. Work identities have become more fractured, ever shifting in response to the uncertainty caused by the rise of the service economy. Consequently, individuals must be able to reflexively reconstruct their identities. Baumann (Reference Baumann1998) has also argued that the ‘consumer society’ has led to the demise of the work ethic with employment being judged by ‘aesthetic criteria’. Jobs that are interesting have become the privilege of the few, for the rest ‘rough coercion’ is required to get them to accept posts offering little aesthetic satisfaction. The present research has suggested that these notions may be irrelevant to those socialised as manual workers. Paid manual work continues to be the source of identity for many middle-aged working-class males. This is not surprising since Craib (Reference Craib1998) has shown that the continued orientation to manual work reflects experiences from a young age which are embodied and thus very difficult to abandon. Similarly, the work ethic was alive and well among those interviewed and their motivations were rather more prosaic.
Nevertheless, the loss of the traditional employment opportunities has been devastating for some of those with previously stable work histories. The conventional wisdom is that long-term unemployment produces an identity crisis since working-class men are left without a role (Campbell, Reference Campbell1993). However, the present research finds that for these individuals informal work may have become a generalised coping strategy that simultaneously helps to meet both financial and identity needs. Nelson and Smith (Reference Nelson and Smith1999) have also shown that some American men have used informal work to forge new identities following redundancy. Riach and Loretto (Reference Riach and Loretto2009) have argued that older unemployed people strongly resist being stigmatised by drawing on past working identities or distancing themselves from stereotypes of non-workers. The present research echoes Gowan's (Reference Gowan1997) conclusions regarding homeless recyclers. ‘Given their stigmatised social position, recyclers are choosing to concentrate their efforts on using their work to redefine themselves as people with full humanity, rather than victims’ (Gowan, Reference Gowan1997: 183/4).
Willis (Reference Willis1977) has speculated that structural unemployment might underpin the development of ‘a white ethnic culture of wagelessness’ amongst some sections of white youth. The present study provides little support for this hypothesis, although the sample was procured by an organisation that helps residents into employment. Nevertheless, informal work appears to play a different role in the lives of younger men on this estate where it is viewed principally as a way of negotiating the uncertainty of the post-industrial labour market and meeting financial needs. The lack of socialisation around manual work may be crucial here. ‘Increasingly working class young men are excluded from the forms of manual labour that brought their fathers a degree of social respect’ (McDowell Reference McDowell2003: 221).
MacDonald et al. (Reference MacDonald, Shildrick, Webster and Simpson2005) have shown that the social networks of young people growing up in deprived communities allow them to ‘get by’ rather than to ‘get on’. This is primarily because job search becomes restricted to the small geographical reach of such networks and confined to a narrow range of jobs. Similarly, the reliance on social networks to access informal opportunities may make it more difficult for the young men in this study to access formal employment. This is because it can't be declared as work experience, detracts from formal job search and offers scant opportunities for human capital development. The short-term imperative to ‘get by’ might mean that young men in deprived communities are inadvertently setting themselves up for more prolonged exclusion. Consequently, policy makers must ensure that the drift of young men in deprived communities into informal work does not lead to their long-term exclusion from mainstream society.
More broadly, the informal economy of the Manor estate, albeit significant, is probably much less pervasive compared to poor US urban communities. Venkatesh's (Reference Venkatesh2006) study of a black ghetto community in Chicago's South-Side found, for example, that it was a ‘city within a city’ with most residents getting by in the underground economy. ‘I soon discovered that the seemingly random collection of men and women in the community . . . were nearly all linked together in a vast, often invisible web that girded their neighbourhood. This web was the underground economy’ (Venkatesh, Reference Venkatesh2006: xiii). This difference may reflect two principal factors. First, US welfare reform has limited the period individuals can claim social assistance. Second, the highly racially segregated nature of American cities has historically forced black communities to provide for themselves and in doing so to develop an alternate economy (Venkatesh, Reference Venkatesh2006).
UK policy makers view paid informal work as fraudulent activity, which deprives the welfare state of financial resources. The December 2008 White Paper proposes the introduction of a new sanction to reduce or withdraw entitlement to benefit for four weeks after a first benefit fraud offence. Punitively low benefit levels are supposed to force the unemployed back into work (DWP, 2008). A key message of the present research is that economic transformation has meant that it is informal work that increasingly allows some working-class males to meet their financial and identity needs. This is not a viable long-term strategy. The participants in this study were exposed to unsafe working conditions and had limited scope to develop their human capital, which is the foundation for upward social mobility. It may also hinder the movement of young men into the formal labour market. Nevertheless, policies designed to reduce benefit fraud and tax evasion risk depriving some of the most economically marginal in society from the resources that they increasingly rely upon.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Professor John Flint and the two anonymous referees who provided helpful comments on this paper.
