Research
You will find a complete range of our peer-reviewed monographs, multi-authored and edited works, including original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
You are looking at 1 - 8 of 8 items for :
- Type: Book x
- Labour Law x
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Since the 2012 LASPO cuts, legal aid provision in England and Wales has faced severe challenges, threatening both client access to justice and traditional practices.
This book offers an in-depth ethnographic study of how these cuts have transformed the professional identity of legal aid lawyers amid shrinking resources. By documenting the first-hand experiences of those on the front line, it reveals how these professionals navigate the precarious landscape while maintaining their commitment to justice.
This is a unique and insightful look into the evolving role of legal aid lawyers in a diminishing industry across both civil and criminal remits.
This book aims to revitalise the link between social justice and labour law through exploring the issue of personhood and the ‘subject’ of the law.
Rodgers argues that incorporating a more ‘relational’ notion of self into labour law not only provides a fresh normative perspective through which to evaluate existing labour laws, but will also make us more able to respond to labour market ‘shocks’ and labour market change into the future, including the introduction of AI.
It is only by embedding relationality into our law that can we really respect the humanity of workers and construct a legal framework through which social justice can be achieved at work.
The gender pay gap is economically irrational and yet stubbornly persistent.
Focusing on the UK finance industry which is known for its gender pay disparity, this book explores the initiatives to fix gendered inequities in the workplace. Rachel Verdin crafts a unique framework, weaving extensive organizational data with women's lived experiences. Interviews uncover gaps in pay transparency, obstacles hindering workplace policies and the factors that are stalling progress for the future.
This is an invaluable resource that offers key insights into gender equality and EDI measures shaped by legal regulations as well as corporate-driven initiatives.
This book exposes how inequalities based on class and social background arise from employment practices in the digital age. It considers instances where social media is used in hiring to infiltrate private lives and hide job advertisements based on locality; where algorithms assess socio-economic data to filter candidates; where human interviewers are replaced by artificial intelligence with design that disadvantages users of classed language; and where already vulnerable groups become victims of digitalisation and remote work.
The author examines whether these practices create risks of discrimination based on certain protected attributes, including "social origin" in international labour law and laws in Australia and South Africa, "social condition" and "family status" in laws within Canada, and others. The book proposes essential law reform and improvements to workplace policy.
Disabled people report high levels of harassment worldwide, often based on intersectional characteristics such as race, gender and age. However, while #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter have highlighted ongoing experiences of sexual and racial harassment, disability harassment has received little attention.
This book focuses on legal measures to combat disability harassment at work. It sets disability harassment in its international context, including its human rights framework, and confronts the lack of empirical information by evaluating the Irish legal framework in practice.
It explores the capacity of the law to address intersectional harassment, particularly that faced by disabled women, and outlines the barriers to effective legal solutions.
Most workers on temporary, zero hours and involuntary part-time contracts in the UK are women. Many are also carers. Yet employment law tends to exclude such women from family-friendly rights.
Drawing on interviews with women in precarious work, this book exposes the everyday problems that these workers face balancing work and care. It argues for stronger and more extensive rights that address precarious workers’ distinctive experiences.
Introducing complex legal issues in an accessible way, this crucial text exposes the failures of family-friendly rights and explains how to grant these women effective rights in the wake of COVID-19.
The effects of COVID-19 are visited disproportionately on the already disadvantaged.
This important text maps out ways in which those already disadvantaged have been affected by legal responses to COVID-19. Contributors tackle issues including virtual trials, adult social care, racism, tax and spending, education and more. They reflect on the implications of COVID-19 and express concerns with policy and practice developments and with the neutral version of the law and the economy which has taken root.
Drawing on diverse resources, this text offers an account of the damage caused by legal responses to the pandemic and demonstrates how the future response can be positive and productive.
Legal professionals are thought to have higher levels of mental health issues and lower levels of wellbeing than the general population.
Drawing on qualitative data from new research with legal practitioners, this in-depth study of mental health and wellbeing in the UK and Republic of Ireland’s legal sector is a timely contribution to the urgent international debate on these issues.
The authors present a comprehensive discussion of the cultural, structural and other causes of legal professionals’ compromised wellbeing. They explore the everyday demands and difficulties of the legal working environment and consider the impacts on individuals, the legal profession and wider society.
Making comparisons with systems overseas, this is an invaluable resource that provides evidence-based suggestions for swift and effective organisational and policy-related interventions in the legal sector.
