Participation in cash-in-hand work in European rural areas: an evaluation of the marginalization thesis

The marginalisation thesis, which holds that populations marginalised from the formal labour market disproportionately participate in cash-in-hand work, is a core assumption of not only modernisation theory, which views cash-in-hand work as a separate realm in which marginalised groups provide goods and services for ‘bottom of the pyramid’ markets, but also political economy theory, which views cash-in-hand work as integrated into contemporary capitalism through outsourcing and subcontracting arrangements and undertaken by marginalised populations as a survival strategy. Until now however, no extensive evaluations of the validity of this marginalisation thesis in rural areas have been conducted. To fill this gap, a 2013 survey of the participation of rural populations in cash-in-hand work in 28 European member states is reported. Using multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression analysis, this reveals that although some marginalised groups in rural areas (those having difficulties paying their household bills, divorced or separated, and younger rural dwellers) are significantly more likely to participate in cash-in-hand work, others are not (women). The paper thus concludes by calling for a more nuanced theorisation of which marginal groups participate in cash-in-hand work and explores the policy implications of this more variegated understanding.