Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1500 titles.
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
This chapter exposes how an employer’s use of automated job candidate screening technologies (algorithms and artificial intelligence) creates risks of discrimination based on class and social background. This includes risks of ‘social origin’ discrimination in Australian and South African law. The chapter examines three recruitment tools: (1) contextual recruitment systems (CRS); (2) Hiretech such as Asynchronous Video Interviewing (AVI); and (3) gamification.
This chapter provides the foundation knowledge needed to understand discrimination based on class and social background, and subsequent chapters of this book. It provides readers with: an overview of leading class theories, including those of Marx, Weber, Bourdieu, and Durkheim; a discussion of social psychology and discrimination; an analysis of class in Australia, South Africa and Canada; and an explanation of discrimination law concepts, including intersectionality.
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.
This chapter examines policy options for employers which may make future workplaces fairer and more equitable. In particular, it considers how the use of CV de-identification or blind recruitment, bias training (with certain qualifications), targeted job advertisements and other strategies may help to enhance socio-economic diversity in workplaces. It also considers how these strategies can be used as alternatives to the existing use of certain recruitment algorithms and artificial intelligence by employers.
This chapter maps the legal landscape in Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand, to investigate whether and the extent to which the law in each country prohibits discrimination based on class and/or social background. It finds that whilst ‘class’ and ‘social background’ are not explicitly listed in legislation as grounds of discrimination, the law in each of these jurisdictions lists other grounds of discrimination which include, or reflect, class and/or factors that go to social background. This chapter analyses the law and legal framework in a number of jurisdictions, including: Australia concerning adverse action and termination of employment based on ‘social origin’, and, discrimination based on ‘social origin’; South Africa concerning discrimination based on ‘social origin’; Quebec, New Brunswick and the Northwest Territories concerning discrimination based on ‘social condition’; Canada and various Canadian provinces concerning discrimination based on ‘family status’; and New Zealand concerning discrimination based on ‘family status’.
This chapter exposes how the rise of platform work (for example, gig work) and the post-pandemic shift to remote work/hybrid work creates disadvantages for already vulnerable workers. The chapter considers how these workers may face disadvantages or discrimination based on their class and/or social background. Intersectionality is also examined.
This chapter exposes how an employer’s use of social media creates risks of discrimination based on class and social background. This includes risks of ‘social origin’ discrimination in Australian and South African law, risks of ‘family status’ discrimination in Canadian and New Zealand law, and risks of discrimination based on other protected attributes. The chapter examines three practices: (1) cybervetting; (2) job advertisement targeting; and (3) terminating an employee’s employment for social media posts.
This chapter unravels the concept of ‘social origin’ discrimination in conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO). It analyses the reports of ILO supervisory bodies and preparatory works (travaux préparatoires) to aid the interpretation of convention text. It also analyses rules of statutory interpretation in Australia and South Africa to explain the relevance of ILO jurisprudence to interpreting ‘social origin’ in domestic legislation.
Chapter Three outlines a wide range of social and structural barriers that may discourage legal claims and explores the available data on the effectiveness of equality legislation in practice. Even where national measures are adopted, it is unclear how effective they are in practice, as states have generally failed to gather information on the operation of disability harassment law. The chapter begins with an overview of the barriers to making equality and disability harassment complaints, followed by a discussion of the success rates for equality claims, including harassment claims. The chapter argues that even where legislation is adopted to address disability harassment, a wide range of social and structural barriers may discourage legal complaints. Furthermore, even where disability harassment claims are brought, the available evidence suggests that the rate of success is not high. Relatively little work has been done to establish the reasons for this, though general research on equality claims may be indicative. The chapter therefore highlights the importance of continued monitoring and research, as well as the need for disaggregated disability equality data.
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.
