Social mobility

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.

This revised edition includes a new foreword and an updated introduction and conclusion providing insights into the key issues. The book's contributors are all leading experts in their fields, and have studied the extent of child poverty, its consequences for children and the effectiveness of policies of prevention.

The study, when published in 2002, received coverage across the globe from Brazil to Greece and attracted the support of the then High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson. Anyone interested in understanding, campaigning or simply debating the issues facing policy makers today will find this book a rich and compelling resource.

Throughout Europe, standardised approaches to social policy and practice are being radically questioned and modified. Beginning from the narrative detail of individual lives, this book re-thinks welfare predicaments, emphasising gender, generation, ethnic and class implications of economic and social deregulation.

This book is the most authoritative study of poverty and social exclusion in Britain at the start of the 21st century. It reports on the most comprehensive survey of poverty and social exclusion, ever to be undertaken in Britain: The Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey.

The first book to examine poverty in Europe within the international framework agreed at the 1995 World Summit on Social Development, this study provides a scientific and international basis for the analysis and reduction of poverty. With contributions from leading poverty experts, it presents cutting-edge international research in one volume.

This book proposes an approach to changing the educational system in order to redress inequalities in society, whilst at the same time acknowledging the potential transformative role of digital technologies.

This book offers an account of how groups of economically marginal people have adapt and negotiate the offerings of a 'post industrial' labour market and a welfare system geared towards reintegrating them into formal employment. Through close ethnographic study it highlights collective strategies and responses to labour and welfare changes.

Rural homelessness explores the shifting policy context of homelessness and social exclusion in relation to rural areas in the UK and other countries in the developed world. Drawing on the first comprehensive survey of rural homelessness in the UK, the book positions these findings within a wider international context.

This book provides a unique insider view on the impact of neighbourhood conditions on family life and explores the prospects for families from the point of view of equality, integration, schools, work, community, regeneration and public services.

As New Labour approaches the end of an unprecedented third term in office, this bestselling book asks whether Britain is more equal than it was in 1997. This second volume, following on from the highly successful "A more equal society?", provides an independent assessment of the success or otherwise of New Labour's policies. 

Despite the high aspirations of young people from disadvantaged communities, they face barriers that are frustrating the realisation of their educational ambitions. This book analyses the ‘left-behind’ phenomenon and explains how denied educational equality undermines social cohesion and what we can do about it.