Sociology: work & labour

Drawing on affect theory and research on academic capitalism and 11 international case studies, this book examines the contemporary crisis of universities, from the coloniality of academic capitalism to performance management and the experience of being performance-managed.

This book offers insights into the argument that capitalist society damages human health and well-being. Drawing on and bringing Marx’s theory of alienation forward to the present day, it uniquely links it to well-being.

Governments worldwide assume that national competitiveness can be improved by developing workforce skills. This book critically examines this 'high skills' vision at both policy and practice levels. It challenges an oversimplified policy rhetoric that underestimates the complexity of the processes involved in developing a skilled workforce.

This volume challenges the idea of wage employment as the global norm, comparing lived experiences of ‘ordinary work’ across conceptual and geographical boundaries and opening up new possibilities for how work, income, identity and care might be woven together differently.

"Beyond the workfare state" explores equality, discrimination and human rights in relation to employability and 'welfare-to-work' policies bringing together a wide and distinctive range of illustrative studies that gives voice to a variety of potentially marginalised groups.

Social marginalisation due to changing labour markets in a global, knowledge-intensive economy poses a major challenge to international welfare states. Addressing the problem from a citizenship perspective, this book contributes significantly to the understanding of policy problems and the development of appropriate strategies.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book reframes the debate about children’s work and harm in rural Africa with the aim of shifting research, public discourse and policy so that they better serve the interest of rural children and their families.

This important book takes readers behind the closed doors of elite employers to reveal how class affects who gets to the top. Drawing on 200 interviews across four case studies - television, accountancy, architecture, and acting – it explores the complex barriers facing the upwardly mobile.

Highlighting what can be learned from individual experiences, the book analyses the changing welfare and labour market policies which shape the lives of working carers in Finland, Sweden, Australia, England, Japan and Taiwan.

Written and informed by national experts, this is the first publication to provide a detailed examination of the development, implementation and implications of carer leave policies and policies in 9 countries across Asia, Oceania, Europe and North America.

Based on field material collected from 2020 to 2022 in Sweden, this book tells a composite story of the everyday work of public sector workers that maintained the welfare infrastructure during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is impossible to view the news at present without hearing talk of crisis: the economy, the climate, the pandemic. This book asks how these larger societal issues lead to a crisis with work, making it ever more precarious, unequal and intense. Experts diagnose the nature of the problem and offer a programme for transcending above the crises.