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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
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Colin C Williams, 2014. "Out of the shadows: a classification of economies by the size and character of their informal sector," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 28(5), pages 735-753, October.
    4. Gabriella Alberti, 2016. "Moving beyond the dichotomy of workplace and community unionism: The challenges of organising migrant workers in London’s hotels," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 37(1), pages 73-94, February.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Mathew Johnson & Eva Herman, 2024. "Out with the old, in with the new? Institutional experimentation and decent work in the UK," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 45(4), pages 1137-1157, November.

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