Working Lives

Gender, Migration and Employment in Britain, 1945-2007

McDowell, Linda

RGS-IBG Book Series

1. Edition July 2013
294 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-4443-3919-2

John Wiley & Sons

Wiley Online Library Sample Chapter

Short Description

With 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. Based on material collected in interviews with women workers in sectors ranging from healthcare to agriculture, banking and textiles, the author combines theoretical rigour with empirical data and personal testimony in an analysis of trends in female migrant labour covering half a century of British employment history.

Further versions

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

List of Figures and Tables viii

Series Editors' Preface x

Preface: Leaving Home and Looking for Work xi

Part One Migration and Mobilities 1

1 Leaving Home: Migration and Working Lives 3

2 Gendering Labour Geographies and Histories 19

3 The Transformation of Britain 51

Part Two Out to Work: Embodied Genealogies 69

4 Post-war Reconstruction, 1945-1951 71

5 Coming Home: The Heart of Empire, 1948-1968 95

6 Years of Struggle, 1968-1979 128

7 Privilege and Inequality, 1979-1997 157

8 Back to the Future: Diversity and Precarious Labour, 1997-2007 184

9 Full Circle, 1945-2007 213

References 232

Appendix: Post-war Legislation 253

Index 263

"In what is a very refreshing contrast to many of the more recent accounts of immaterial labor, which tend to focus on the highly skilled and well-paid sectors of the labor market and, to a great extent, on an undifferentiated image of the postindustrial worker, McDowell foregrounds the actual laboring bodies of migrant women, marked as they are by gender, skin color, nationality, class, ethnicity, and other signs of difference." (Economic Geography, 1 January 2015)

"Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." (Choice, 1 February 2014)

Review appeared in Times Higher Education - 10 October 2013
"McDowell provides intriguing, important insights into the female immigrant experience, drawing selectively on interviews with sections of this complex shifting population. It is too diverse an experience to survey comprehensively in a short book, but it whets my appetite for a fuller version that draws on all of the interviews she conducted." (Times Higher Education, 10 October 2013)

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).

L. McDowell, University of Oxford, UK