 Evaluating the participation of an ethnic minority group in informal employment: a product of exit or exclusion?Muhammad Shehryar Shahid, Peter Rodgers and Colin Williams Review of Social Economy, 2017, vol. 75, issue 4, 468-488 Abstract: This paper critically evaluates competing explanations for the participation of ethnic minority groups in informal employment. These interpret their participation either through a structuralist lens arising out of ‘exclusion’ from formal employment or through a neo-liberal and/or post-structuralist lens driven by voluntary ‘exit’ from formal institutions. To evaluate critically these competing explanations, this paper reports a survey of the experiences of Pakistani immigrants in informal employment in Sheffield, including fifty face-to-face interviews and two focus groups. The findings highlight informal employment amongst this Pakistani ethnic minority group is neither universally driven by exclusion nor exit. Instead, some participate mostly due to exclusion, others mostly for exit rationales and some for a combination of the two, with different mixtures across different groups and types of informal employment. The outcome is a call for greater appreciation of the multifarious character of undeclared work and a move beyond simplistic explanations and policy responses. Date: 2017 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:75:y:2017:i:4:p:468-488 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/00346764.2016.1269941 Access Statistics for this article Review of Social Economy is currently edited by Wilfred Dolfsma and John Davis More articles in Review of Social Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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