ABSTRACT
The extent to which people have moved from unemployment into self-employment has been small. Only about 8 per cent of all entrepreneurs or one in five of those in new firms, claim to have been previously unemployed before setting up in their premises. In seeking to generate work and incomes for disadvantaged workers in depressed communities, locally-based strategies should recognise the social impacts of unemployment which serve to break up social networks and exclude people from activities in the community which they would have participated in had they been in work. They should also recognise that apparently similar areas like Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal (GEAR) and Clydebank may have a widely different reservoir of skills, and entrepreneurial capacity. With conventional small enterprise apparently unlikely to recruit from the ranks of the long-term unemployed, other strategies which generate work and incomes for this group are desperately needed. A new form of enterprise which may offer some help is the community business.
