The rapid economic growth of the past few decades has radically transformed India’s labour market, bringing millions of former agricultural workers into manufacturing industries, and, more recently, the expanding service industries, such as call centres and IT companies.
Alongside this employment shift has come a change in health and health problems, as communicable diseases have become less common, while non-communicable diseases, like cardiovascular problems, and mental health issues such as stress, have increased.
This interdisciplinary work connects those two trends to offer an analysis of the impact of working conditions on the health of Indian workers that is unprecedented in scope and depth.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded, stark social inequalities have increasingly been revealed and, in many cases, been exacerbated by the global health crisis.
This book explores these inequalities, identifying three thematic strands: power and governance, gender, and marginalised communities. By examining these three themes in relation to the effects of the pandemic, the book uncovers how unequal the pandemic truly is. It brings together invaluable insights from a range of international scholars across multiple disciplines to critically analyse how these inequalities have played out in the context of COVID-19 as a first step towards achieving social justice.
Who steals jobs? Who owns jobs?
Focusing on the competitive labour market, this book scrutinizes the narratives created around immigration and automation. The authors explore how the advances in AI and demands for constant flow of immigrant workers eradicate political and working rights, fuelling fears over job theft and ownership.
Shedding light on the multiple ways in which employment is used as an instrument of neoliberal governance, this revealing book sparks new debate on the role of automation and migration policies. It is an invaluable resource for academics and practitioners working in the areas of immigration and labour, capitalism and social exclusion, and economic models and political governance.
Labour exploitation is a highly topical though complex issue that has international resonance for those concerned with social justice and social welfare, but there is a lack of research available about it. This book, part of the Studies in Social Harm series, is the first to look at labour exploitation from a social harm perspective, arguing that, as a global social problem, it should be located within the broader study of work-based harm.
Written by an expert in policy orientated research, he critiques existing approaches to the study of workplace exploitation, abuse and forced labour. Mapping out a new sub-discipline, this innovative book aims to shift power from employers to workers to reduce levels of labour exploitation and work-based harm. It is relevant to academics from many fields as well as legislators, policy makers, politicians, employers, union officials, activists and consumers.
For the past century, governments have been compelled, time and again, to return to the search for solutions to the housing and economic challenges posed by a restructuring countryside. The rural housing question is an analysis of the complexity of housing and development tensions in the rural areas of England, Wales and Scotland. It analyses a range of topics: from attitudes to rural development, economic change, land use, planning and counter-urbanisation; through retirement and ageing, leisure consumption, lifestyle shifts and homelessness; to public and private house building, private and public renting and community initiatives. Across this spectrum of concerns, it attempts to isolate the fundamental tensions that give the rural housing question an intractable quality. The book is aimed at policy makers, researchers, students and anyone with an interest in the future of the British countryside.
Austerity was presented as the antidote to sluggish economies, but it has had far-reaching effects on jobs and employment conditions.
With an international team of editors and authors from Europe, North America and Australia, this illuminating collection goes beyond a sole focus on public sector work and uniquely covers the impact of austerity on work across the private, public and voluntary spheres.
Drawing on a range of perspectives, the book engages with the major debates surrounding austerity and neoliberalism, providing grounded analysis of the everyday experience of work and employment.
Food today is over-corporatized and under-regulated. It is involved in many immoral, harmful, and illegal practices along production, distribution, and consumption systems. These problematic conditions have significant consequences on public health and well-being, nonhuman animals, and the environment, often simultaneously.
In this insightful book, Gray and Hinch explore the phenomenon of food crime. Through discussions of food safety, food fraud, food insecurity, agricultural labour, livestock welfare, genetically modified foods, food sustainability, food waste, food policy, and food democracy, they problematize current food systems and criticize their underlying ideologies.
Bringing together the best contemporary research in this area, they argue for the importance of thinking criminologically about food and propose radical solutions to the realities of unjust food systems.
Lurid headlines on every aspect of migration have been a consistent feature of the last decade, from worries over asylum seekers to concerns about unprecedented economic immigration from Eastern Europe.
This book presents the first comprehensive account of government policy on immigration over the last ten years, providing an in-depth analysis of policy and legislation since Tony Blair and New Labour were first elected. The account begins by placing policy change under Labour in their proper historical context, before examining the key policy themes - economic migration; security; integration; asylum; delivery - of the last decade.
Through an analysis of such policy themes, the author contends that immigration policy has undergone an intense and innovative transformation in the period from May 1997 to May 2007. Arguing that a more plural system of governance exists, the author challenges traditional accounts of policy development. By addressing the various influences on immigration policymaking, from globalisation, the European Union and the law, to politics, the media and the networks of special interests, he seeks to provide a holistic explanation for the transformation of immigration policy. The author concludes with an evaluation of Labour’s immigration reforms, and whether government policy can be judged a success.
The book will be of interest to policymakers, academics, students studying immigration, and readers interested in serious current affairs.
The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has made the annual Social Policy Review even more critical than before.
This comprehensive volume addresses critical debates throughout the international social policy field over the past year with a key focus on responses to COVID-19 and implications for social policy. Expert contributors address important issues including foodbanks, caring for older family members, lockdowns around the globe, gender, technology and migration during a pandemic.
Published in association with the Social Policy Association, this annual review is fundamental reading for students and academics in social policy, social welfare and related disciplines.
Driven by consumers’ desire for slow and local food, craft breweries, traditional butchers, cheese makers and bakeries have been popping up across the US in the last twenty years. Typically urban and staffed predominantly by white middle class men, these industries are perceived as a departure from tradition and mainstream lifestyles. But this image obscures the diverse communities that have supported artisanal foods for centuries.
Using the oral histories of over 100 people, this book brings to light the voices, experiences, and histories of marginalized groups who keep Southern foodways alive. The larger than life stories of these individuals reveal the complex reality behind the movement and show how they are the backbone of the so-called "new explosion" of craft food.
