Working Lives: Gender, Migration and Employment in Britain, 1945-2007 (Rgs-Ibg Book) - Hardcover

McDowell, Department Of Geography Linda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1444339192 ISBN 13: 9781444339192

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013

Synopsis

Full of unique and compelling insights into the working lives of migrant women in the UK, this book draws on more than two decades of in-depth research to explore the changing nature of women’s employment in post-war Britain.

• A first-rate example of theoretically located empirical analysis of labour market change in contemporary Britain
• Includes compelling case studies that combine historical documentation of social change with fascinating first-hand accounts of women’s working lives over decades
• Integrates information gleaned from more than two decades of in-depth research
• Revealing comparative analysis of the similarities and differences in the lives of immigrant working women in post-war Britain
• Features real-life accounts of women’s under-reported experiences of migration

About this title

From the Back Cover:

‘In this rich book, Linda McDowell writes an important history of the changing nature of work in Britain over the last 60 years through the experience and eyes of immigrant women. There are not many books that bring together the trials, hopes and achievements of various generations of working women from East Europe, the Caribbean and East Africa, and fewer still that rethink British labour market history on the basis of the evidence gathered. A very fine piece of scholarship.’
Ash Amin, University of Cambridge

‘An insightful and well-researched study of post second world war women’s migration into Britain, exploring the interplay between their changing self-understanding, patterns of work and gender identity. The unusual and original angle of analysis yields many a novel conclusion and makes the book indispensable.’
Bhikku Parekh, University of Westminster and House of Lords

Full of unique and compelling insights into the working lives of migrant women in the UK, this book explores the changing nature of women’s employment in post-war Britain. Seen through the eyes of those arriving and seeking work since 1945, the author’s analysis of working patterns is based on many hours of interviews with female textile workers, hospital domestics, nurses, automotive workers, photo print packers, bankers, doctors, cleaners, nannies and agricultural workers.

The volume uses these first-hand accounts to track social changes in the UK up to 2007, combining theory and analysis of empirical data to provide a cogent analysis of the characteristics of the labour market in contemporary Britain. Linda McDowell sets the vivid details of women’s lives in the context of far-reaching changes in the country’s employment landscape and immigrant regulatory framework since World War II. Deploying fresh information gleaned from oral history accumulated over two decades of research, the book is a fascinating survey of the origins of Britain’s ethnically diverse population that fuses sociological and geographical analysis to demonstrate how migrant women are viewed by society as suitable workers for particular types of jobs.

About the Author:

Linda McDowell is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oxford. She is a Fellow of St John’s College, where she is the Director of the Research Centre, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Widely published and well-known as a feminist ethnographer of labour and employment, her books include Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City (Blackwell, 1997), Gender, Identity and Place (1999), Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working-Class Youth (Blackwell, 2003), Hard Labour (2005) and Working Bodies: Interactive Service Employment and Workplace Identities (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1444339192
• ISBN 13: 9781444339192
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296