CHAPTER 4 Dualisms of Precarious Work: Nonstandard Work, Informal Economy, and Self- Employment

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-105
Keyword(s):  
Informal Economy ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
Nonstandard Work ◽  
Self Employment

Situating Self-Employed Urban Women Conducting Business through Contemporary Social Media

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shruti Kalyanaraman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Informal Economy ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Business Women ◽  
Employed Women

Informal economy includes varied set of economic activities, enterprises, jobs, and workers. The economy typically consists of enterprises and/or people that are not regulated or protected by the state. The concept originally applied to self-employment in small unregistered enterprises. It has been expanded to include wage employment in unprotected jobs. A home-based self-employed women worker can be involved as a fashion designer, a tiffin service provider, a home tutor, a person working with vendors, selling and reselling apparel, accessories to name a few. Informal self-employment is very large and heterogeneous as a category itself. There are different people working within in an informally self-employed category. The review tries to understand home based business women within the ambit of informal employment. The focus of research turns to technological advancement, social media and its impact on womens economic and business efforts. The review, using a feminist lens, understands academic researches on womens economic efforts. The reviews focus will largely be owners and own account (individually run enterprises) women workers of informal enterprises in urban areas which for ease of reference, I have termed as home-based self-employed urban woman.

Black Women, Urban Labor, and New York’s Informal Economy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
LaShawn Harris
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Informal Economy ◽  
Collateral Consequences ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
Informal Labor ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
Social Opportunities ◽  
Wage Earners

This chapter offers an overview of black women informal workers both as wage earners and entrepreneurs, positioning their experiences at the center of New York's informal labor market. It highlights working-class black women's socioeconomic conditions and the ways in which economic distress coupled with varying perceptions of urban public space and racial uplift motivated some women's attraction to nontraditional modes of labor. New York black women viewed the economic and social opportunities offered by off-the-books labor as a path toward altering the recipe of possibilities for themselves. But securing extralegal and unlicensed labor that disrupted normative gender roles and racial hierarchies and ideas about public decorum came at a price. Collateral consequences were certainly part of some black women's trajectory as underground workers and entrepreneurs. This chapter also considers the dangers and obstacles associated with self-employment and laboring for employers willing to pay them under the table.

scholarly journals Self-employment, the informal economy and the marginalisation thesis

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin C Williams ◽  
Ioana Alexandra Horodnic
Keyword(s):  
Informal Economy ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
Extensive Evaluation ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Do So

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate which groups of the self-employed engage in the informal economy. Until now, self-employed people participating in the informal economy have been predominantly viewed as marginalised populations such as those on a lower income and living in deprived regions (i.e. the “marginalisation thesis”). However, an alternative emergent “reinforcement thesis” conversely views the marginalised self-employed as less likely to do so. Until now, no known studies have evaluated these competing perspectives. Design/methodology/approach – To do this, the author report a 2013 survey conducted across 28 countries involving 1,969 face-to-face interviews with the self-employed about their participation in the informal economy. Findings – Using multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression analysis, the finding is that the marginalisation thesis applies when examining characteristics such as the age, marital status, tax morality, occupation and household financial circumstances of the self-employed engaged in the informal economy. However, when gender and regional variations are analysed, the reinforcement thesis is valid. When characteristics such as the urban-rural divide and educational level are analysed, no evidence is found to support either the marginalisation or reinforcement thesis. Research limitations/implications – The outcome is a call for a more nuanced understanding of the marginalisation thesis that the self-employed participating in the informal economy are largely marginalised populations. Originality/value – This is the first extensive evaluation of which self-employed groups participate in the informal economy.

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