Just published
Employer Engagement
Making Active Labour Market Policies Work
Active labour market policies aim to assist people not in work into work through a range of interventions including job search, training and in-work support and development. While policies and scholarship predominantly focus on jobseekers’ engagement with these initiatives, this book sheds light for the first time on the employer’s perspective.
International Theory at the Margins
Neglected Essays, Recurring Themes
This book brings together thirteen of Nicholas Onuf’s previously published yet rarely cited essays. They address topics that Onuf has puzzled over for decades, including the problem of materiality in social construction, epochal change in the modern world, and the power of language.
Migration, Health, and Inequalities
Critical Activist Research across Ecuadorean Borders
This interdisciplinary activist research project shows the health and well-being impacts of transnational migration on Ecuadorean families. Roberta Villalón documents the intersection of social inequalities and migration and health policies, and how individual and collective action challenges marginalising structures and fosters social justice.
Interpretive Sociology and the Semiotic Imagination
Written by experts in interpretive sociology, this volume examines semiotic models in a sociological context. Contributors offer case studies to demonstrate ‘how to do things’ with semiotics. Synthesizing a diverse and fragmented landscape, this is a key reference work for understanding the connection between semiotics and sociology.
Social Care in the UK’s Four Nations
Between Two Paradigms
The devolution of social care policy has led to key differences emerging between the UK’s four care systems. This book presents research on the perspectives of social care policy makers within the UK’s four care systems, concluding that when given equal capacity to reform, the systems in each nation may take radically different shapes.
Robots and Immigrants
Who Is Stealing Jobs?
This book scrutinises the narratives created around stealing jobs, opening new debates on the role of automation and migration policies. The authors reveal how the advances in AI and demands for constant flow of immigrant workers eradicate political and working rights, propagating fears over job theft and ownership.
Ageing, Men and Social Relations
New Perspectives on Masculinities and Men’s Social Connections in Later Life
While there has been an increase in scholarship on men, ageing and masculinities, little attention has been paid to the social relations of men in later life. This collection fills this gap by foregrounding older men’s experiences, providing new perspectives across the intersections of old age, ethnicities, class and sexual and gender identity.
Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy
Amazon and the Power of Organization
Drawing on interviews with Amazon workers and original empirical data, this book explores how different working conditions estrange and alienate workers, and how, despite these, workers find ways to organize and express their agency. This is an important analysis of work on the digital shop floor for the scholars of platform economy.
Interpreting the Body
Between Meaning and Matter
Written by leading social scientists, this ambitious volume asks what individuals’ “handling” of bodies reveal about inequality, social order and cultural change in societies.
Elements of Research Design
This concise and accessible guide to designing a dissertation, thesis or other major study helps researchers achieve the best possible outcomes. It sets out approaches that are not limited by conventions, but instead give the researcher the confidence to handle questions, literature reviews, data collection, analysis and other processes.
Who Needs Nurseries?
We Do!
The role that nurseries play in supplementing family care is an important subject – but in the UK, there is currently little consensus about what nurseries should provide, how they should be run, and who should pay for them. In this book, Helen Penn asks: is there a more considered way ahead?
Schooling Inequality
Aspirations, Opportunities and the Reproduction of Social Class
Drawing on unique new research gathered from three contrasting secondary schools in England, this book explores the aspirations, opportunities and experiences of young people from different social-class backgrounds against a backdrop of continuing inequalities in education.