Beyond employment: An examination of modes of service provision in a deprived neighbourhood

The aim of this article is to show that despite the growth in service emplo yment, the formalisation of services is neither as all-pervasive as such gr owth suggests nor is it a natural and inevitable process. Through a case st udy of a deprived neighbourhood, this article finds that the vast majority of services remain informally provided, that it is not the poorest househol ds who acquire the largest proportion of their services informally and that informal services are not used purely out of economic necessity. Therefore , the predominance of informality is unlikely to be confined to deprived ne ighbourhoods. The problem, however given that those who purchase fewest for mal services also acquire fewest informal services, is that informal modes of provision seem to reinforce rather than reduce the socio-economic inequa lities produced by employment.