Poverty and Insecurity: Life in 'low-pay, No-pay' BritainWinner of the British Academy Peter Townsend Prize for 2013 How do men and women get by in times and places where opportunities for standard employment have drastically reduced? Are we witnessing the growth of a new class, the 'Precariat', where people exist without predictability or security in their lives? What effects do flexible and insecure forms of work have on material and psychological well-being? This book is the first of its kind to examine the relationship between social exclusion, poverty and the labour market. It challenges long-standing and dominant myths about 'the workless' and 'the poor', by exploring close-up the lived realities of life in low-pay, no-pay Britain. Work may be 'the best route out of poverty' sometimes but for many people getting a job can be just a turn in the cycle of recurrent poverty - and of long-term churning between low-skilled 'poor work' and unemployment. Based on unique qualitative, life-history research with a 'hard-to-reach group' of younger and older people, men and women, the book shows how poverty and insecurity have now become the defining features of working life for many. |
Contents
1 Introduction | 1 |
2 Poor work welfare and poverty | 11 |
3 Researching the lowpay nopay cycle and recurrent poverty | 39 |
the perspectives and practices of employers and welfare to work agencies | 61 |
its pattern and peoples commitment to work | 79 |
qualifications support for the workless and
the good and bad of informal social networks | 101 |
insecurity and churning in deindustrialised labour markets | 125 |
ill health and caring and their impact on the lowpay nopay cycle | 143 |
9 Poverty and social insecurity | 167 |
10 Conclusions | 193 |
| 225 | |
| 247 | |
Other editions - View all
Poverty and insecurity: Life in low-pay, no-pay Britain Shildrick, Tracy,MacDonald, Robert Limited preview - 2012 |
Common terms and phrases
ajob argue barrier benefits system better careers casualised cent centre changes Chapter 9 childcare churning claim debt deindustrialisation demand depression deprived described discussion drug earlier economic employers employment agencies example Experian experience finding flexible government’s hardship heroin household ill health impact income individuals industry informants insecurity interviewees job search Jobcentre jobseekers Joseph Rowntree Foundation labour market lives London long-term low wage low-paid jobs low-pay low-waged MacDonald and Marsh manager Middlesbrough motivation neighbourhoods no-pay cycle North East England offer ofjobs ofthe ofwork organisations paid part-time people’s periods Polly Toynbee poor potential poverty line precariat precarious problems programme psychological qualifications recruitment recurrent poverty relatively reported Rowntree Foundation sample skills social capital social exclusion sometimes sort Tax Credit Teesside Teesside’s temporary there’s typical underemployment unemployed voluntary sector week welfare workers working-class worklessness young adults