Microcrédit et travail au noir. L'informalité est-elle soluble dans la solvabilité ?

This paper, based on an ongoing study conducted in a Seine-Saint-Denis branch of a microcredit association, explores the impact of microcredit on one aspect of illegal work, which is unregistered small economic activities. The association refers to these as small income-generating activities. The method used was mainly ethnographic (participant observation, interviews), but also consisted in the review of judicial and administrative sources. The exploratory exploitation of a database also provided some of the results outlined here. The association attempts to accompany socially-marginalized people towards registration, but accepts to finance undeclared work to a certain extent. The targeting of the undeclared entrepreneurs can be explained among other reasons by the aim of the association to be financially sustainable. These entrepreneurs, who are in significant proportion immigrants and gypsies, are involved in a survival economy, far from the classic capitalist enterprise. The registration is made possible by government support, through specific measures such as accre (aid for the unemployed who create their own businesses, under the form of tax exemption), and by the social contributions of the association, more than by microcredit itself. But after the three-year period of tax exemption, the situation of the clients appears to have remained precarious, and the few who registered still tend to keep things off the books. In conclusion, more in depth study is needed, in particular to apprehend the impact of the objective of financial sustainability. Classification JEL : E51, G21, H26, Z13.