By Guest
Anne Stewart works at Church Action on Poverty’s Community Pride Unit, who have done a lot of work looking at the informal economy in the area around Manchester. They are part of Community Links’ Need not Greed campaign.
In a report published by Community Pride in 2008 called Invisible Workers, it was clear that lots of people in many of our inner-city communities are actually working! The reasons they are working ‘informally’ are many and varied. The key issue is that people simply do not have enough to live on and have to find ways of surviving and sustaining each other.
We found that the ‘Informal’ economy actually acts as a form of social cohesion in many areas. The jobs that are available are often very low-paid, and many people need much more flexibility in working conditions to be able to participate in the jobs market.
The Government needs to recognise the skills and experience of people working informally and do much more to enable them to develop their business or enterprise. There need to be more opportunities for people to make the transition from informality into the formal economy.
Media campaigns which stigmatise people are making them afraid to come forward and ask for help and advice. People need to be encouraged by campaigns which highlight what people have to offer. In our research we met people who had been pursued and criminalised in a way which did not address how or why they were in the situations they were in. Some people have simply failed to understand the complex benefits system and others have ended up in court without proper advice or representation. We need more decently paid jobs and a less complex benefit system.
This post is part of Community Links and Church Action on Poverty‘s project looking at working age poverty, contributing to the European Year Against Poverty