ABSTRACT This article examines the informal economic practices adopted by those on low incomes in the French countryside and the different meanings attached to them. Two groups are distinguished: the first, from the agricultural or rural working class, resorts to la débrouille (a term which reflects a set of activities involved in getting by, making do, and being resourceful) out of necessity and do not attach any political significance to these practices; the second, from urban working or lower middle class backgrounds, politicise this way of life as a means of reducing their dependence on the capitalist system. This article is based on interviews and ethnographic material from forty people living in six different rural areas in France. The analysis adopts an emic perspective of la débrouille to question its scientific (and political) interpretation in terms of resistance, showing the diversity of meanings attached to it, ranging from an ambivalent popular ‘sense of self’ to a more politicised appropriation of this working class way of life.