IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ecoind/v40y2019i3p755-775.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

New insights into informal migrant employment: Hand car washes in a mid-sized English city

Author

Listed:
  • Ian Clark

    (University of Leicester, UK)

  • Trevor Colling

    (King’s College London, UK)

Abstract

This article provides new analytical insight into migrant labour by examining a newly emergent low-margin sector, hand car washes (HCWs). The sector is co-created by pressures from above in the form of economic restructuring and from below by employers and migrants who diffuse fluid and flexible low-wage employment. The diffusion of HCWs demonstrates how exploitative privatized employment generates autonomous economic growth in the unregulated economy. The formal and informal economies are however interlinked and overlapping within and beyond the labour process. Locally, HCWs have the potential to become the established car wash sector, putting regulated outlets in a state of uncertainty as informalization in employment if not business practice becomes the norm.

Suggested Citation

  • Ian Clark & Trevor Colling, 2019. "New insights into informal migrant employment: Hand car washes in a mid-sized English city," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 40(3), pages 755-775, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:40:y:2019:i:3:p:755-775
    DOI: 10.1177/0143831X16669840
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X16669840
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0143831X16669840?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:40:y:2019:i:3:p:755-775. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ekhist.uu.se/english.htm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.