POLITICAL SCIENCE / Labor & Industrial Relations

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.

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.

Crafted for those who dare to challenge the status quo, this revolutionary guide asks crucial questions about organising and social movements in the 21st century. Drawing from frontline experiences of activists, it explores essential themes from leadership to the art of negotiation, empowering changemakers of today for a more just world.

"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.

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.