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This paper argues that by shackling the future of work to a vision of full employment, alternative futures are closed off. At present, employment creation is seen as the sole route out of poverty. Here, however, we reveal that a complementary additional pathway is to help people to help themselves and each other. To show this, evidence from a survey of 400 households in deprived neighbourhoods of Southampton and Sheffield is reported. This reveals that besides creating job opportunities, measures that directly empower people to improve their circumstances could be a useful complementary initiative to combat social exclusion and open up new futures for work that are currently closed off.

To evaluate critically the view of undeclared work as market‐like activity conducted for monetary gain, and participation as a rational economic decision, and the resultant public policy response that seeks to deter engagement in such work by ensuring that the expected cost of being caught and punished is greater than the economic benefit of participating.

Review of empirical research on the work relations and motives of those engaged in undeclared work.

This paper reveals that although some undeclared work is market‐like and conducted for unadulterated economic reasons, a large proportion is carried out under relations and for motives more akin to unpaid mutual aid, especially in deprived populations.

Evaluating the implications of this finding for a deterrence approach, the argument is that rather than simply seek to eliminate such paid mutual aid through deterrence, a more refined approach is required that combines deterrence with initiatives to facilitate the legitimisation of such work. How this might be achieved is then outlined.

This paper provides the rationale for moving towards a more “joined‐up” public policy approach towards tackling undeclared work and developing social capital rather than treating them as separate policy realms.

In the majority (third) world, informal employment has been long viewed as an asset to be harnessed rather than a hindrance to development. The purpose of this paper is to show how a similar perspective is starting to be embraced in advanced economies and investigates the implications for public policy of this re‐reading.

Documents the shifts in how informal employment in western economies is conceptualised in both the academic literature and public policy.

This paper reveals that the representation of informal employment as an exploitative, low‐paid sweatshop realm is being replaced with a depiction of such work as a hidden enterprise culture that needs to be harnessed. Evaluating how this might be achieved, the need for a shift in public policy away from a deterrence approach and towards an approach that combines deterrents with enabling initiatives to pull this hidden enterprise culture into the formal economy is identified. Specific enabling measures to achieve this in the context of advanced economies are then discussed.

This paper displays how western governments can harness the hidden enterprise culture by setting out specific initiatives to enable its transfer into the formal economy.

This paper provides one of the first attempts to re‐read informal employment as a hidden enterprise culture and to evaluate its implications for public policy.

In both the United States and the United Kingdom, a series of surveys of the mental health of children and, in particular, adolescents have suggested that there appear to be significant increases in measured levels of anxiety and depression among more recently‐born populations. Here, 16 studies are selected of children in North America, which adds to the body of evidence suggesting that rates of depression among adolescent girls do appear to be rising (p=0.024) to rates of above one in seven suffering in the most recent of surveys, as opposed to almost seven times fewer being depressed among their mothers' generation. The results for boys also show a rise, but not yet significant at the p<0.05 level (p=0.108). These studies are taken from a wider worldwide set, which, in aggregate, do not show a sustained rise. In the worldwide set of studies, most of the more recent surveys have been taken in more equitable affluent countries away from North America or the United Kingdom. By inference, this review suggests that it is the particularly competitive and divisive social environments of North America and the United Kingdom that may well have led to levels of anxiety rising for children in countries in these regions more significantly than elsewhere in affluent countries. Geography appears to matter to children's mental health. The review begins and ends by raising concerns over the possible effects of the current economic crash given this social context, and the political desire to return to economic business as usual.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine how staff contributes to the operations of an adult drug court and, more critically, how staff produces client failure. Previous drug court researchers often attribute outcomes to the characteristics or the behaviors of the clients or to the program design, not to the actions of the staff.

Methodology – This study is based on extensive field research in three drug courts over a 4-year period. We observed both public and less public drug court events from the court event to staff meetings.

Findings – The key finding is that staff produces program failures. Within the policies and procedures of their programs, using their professional belief systems, and in interaction with a range of others to manage the demands of their position, staff produces the outcomes.

Limitations – As with other ethnographies, the generalizability of the exact processes may be limited. The core finding that the staff actively creates outcome decisions is a fundamental process that we believe occurs in any drug court or, more widely, problem-solving courts.

Implications – The practical implications of this research are in the illustrations of how staff matter, which we hope will spur others into examinations of staff actions.

Originality – Previous research ignores staff or treats them as mere extension program policies. The in-depth examination of staff behavior provides a unique and valuable examination of how much is lost by ignoring the staff judgments, perceptions, and actions.