International audience Our study of the migrants and the underground economy in Austria highlights the following features: 1) the underground economy is contextual, with its form, content and dynamic being specific to the national and other contexts in which it is used and understood; 2) the form, the content and the dynamic of the phenomenon are situational; 3) the occurrence and development of the phenomenon is gradual, influenced by many factors such as migrants’ length of residency, year of entry, gender, capitals, government policies, political and public discourse etc; 4) the phenomenon is conditional, referring to the character of the residency as being understood and dealt with by migrants themselves, and by the actual practice of formal intuitions as a formal and/or informal response to the structural need of the national economy in the era of globalisation.