Afternoon Moonlighting – it Was a Must. The Dynamics and Paradoxes of the Croatian Socialist and Post-socialist Labor Market

Abstract

This paper discusses the elements of socialist and post-socialist (un)employment and informal economy. A growing economic crisis and a reduced participation in the formal labor market in the newly-formed Croatian state in the early 1990s brought about an increase in unemployment and gave rise to informal economy. However, informal economy had been widespread even before, in the late socialist period in the former Yugoslavia, which was the so-called "golden age" of formal employment. Being formally employed generally did not discourage people from additionally engaging in informal economy.This paper offers an analysis of the cultural and social logic behind informal practices, based on a qualitative research that was conducted in an urban settlement in the periphery of Zagreb among former full-time industrial workers, who are officially unemployed today, and who have been active in the underground economy up to the present day.

COVID-19 and undeclared work: impacts and policy responses in Europe

“…Undeclared work is more prevalent in poorer countries (Schneider & Williams, 2013;Williams, 2015), less wealthy regions (Kesteloot & Meert, 1999;Williams & Windebank, 2001) and peripheral rural areas (Button, 1984;Williams, 2004). Similarly, the unemployed disproportionately engage in undeclared work (Ahmad & Nobil, 2008;Castree et al, 2004;Katungi et al, 2006;Rubić, 2013;Sasunkevich, 2014;Surdej & Ślęzak, 2009), those with fewer years in full-time education are more likely than those with more years in fulltime education (Slavnic, 2010;Taiwo, 2013), and those with financial difficulties are more likely than more affluent population groups (Barbour & Llanes, 2013;Katungi et al, 2006;Williams, 2004). Using a multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression analysis of the 2013 Eurobarometer survey of the EU, moreover, the finding is that the unemployed and those having difficulties paying their household bills are significantly more likely to participate in undeclared work, although this was not found to be the case those with less formal education and living in rural areas and deprived European regions (Williams & Horodnic, 2017a).…”