Poverty, Inequality and Social Justice

The issues involved in poverty, inequality and social justice are many and varied, from basic access to education and healthcare, to the financial crisis and resulting austerity, and now COVID-19. Addressing Goal 1: No Poverty, Goal 5: Gender Equality, Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities and Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, our list both presents research on these topics and tackles emerging problems. A key series in the area is the SSSP Agendas for Social Justice.

This focus has always been at the heart of our publishing with the view to making the research in this area as visible and accessible as possible in order to maximise its potential impact.

Bristol University Press and Policy Press are signed up to the UN SDG Publishers Compact. In Poverty, inequality and social justice, we aim to address the following goals: 

Poverty, Inequality and Social Justice

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Developing the new framework of ‘life-mix’, which considers the mixed patterns of caring and working in different periods of life, this book systematically explores the interplay of productivism, women, care and work in East Asia and Europe.

The book ranges across four key aspects of welfare – childcare, parental leave, employment support and pensions – to illustrate how policies affect women in various periods of their lives. Policy case studies from France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, South Korea, Sweden and the UK, show how welfare could support people’s caring and working lives. This book forms a prescient examination of how productivist thinking underpins regimes and impacts women’s welfare, care and work in both the East and West.

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Why Flexible Working Leads to (Self-)Exploitation
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Does flexible working really provide a better work-life balance?

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, flexible working has become the norm for many workers. This volume offers an original examination of flexible working using data from 30 European countries and drawing on studies conducted in Australia, the US and India. Rather than providing a better work-life balance, the book reveals how flexible working can lead to exploitation, which manifests differently for women and men, such as more care responsibilities or increased working hours.

Taking a critical stance, this book investigates the potential risks and benefits of flexible working and provides crucial policy recommendations for overcoming the negative consequences.

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The Politics of Everyday Life
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What kinds of care are being offered or withdrawn by the welfare state? What does this mean for the caring practices and interventions of local activists?

Shedding new light on austerity and neoliberal welfare reform in the UK, this vital book considers local action and activism within contexts of crisis, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

Presenting compelling case studies of local action, from protesting cuts to children’s services to local food provisioning and support for migrant women, this book makes visible often unseen practices of activism. It shows how the creativity and persistence of such local practices can be seen as enacting wider visions of how care should be provided by society.

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Learning from Feminist Anti-Violence Activists
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How can we reimagine the relationship between academia and activism to provide new opportunities for social change?

Based on an ethnography with an anti-violence feminist collective, this vibrant and vital book develops an interdisciplinary approach to activism and activist research, helping us reimagine the role of scholarship in the fight against social inequality.

With its reflections on novel tools that can be utilized in the fight for social justice, this book will be a valuable resource for academics in critical management studies, sociology, gender studies, and social work as well as practitioners and policymakers across the social services sector.

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Lived Experiences of the Crisis
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Using interviews with women from diverse backgrounds, Dabrowski makes an invaluable contribution to the debates around the gendered politics of austerity in the UK.

Exploring the symbiotic relationship between the state’s legitimization of austerity and women’s everyday experiences, she reveals how unjust policies are produced, how alternatives are silenced and highlights the different ways in which women are used or blamed.

By understanding austerity as more than simply an economic project, this book fills important gaps in existing knowledge on state, gender and class relations in the context of UK austerity.

Austerity, Women and the Role of the State is shortlisted for the 2021 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize.

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Analysis and debate in social policy, 2019

Bringing together the voices of leading experts in the field, this edition offers an up-to-date and diverse review of the best in social policy scholarship over the past year.

The book considers a range of current issues and critical debates in UK and international social policy field. It contains vital research, including discussions on the changing landscape of occupational as well as corporate welfare in the UK, the continuing impact of austerity on various social policy areas and the challenges currently faced by the NHS.

Published in association with the SPA, this comprehensive analysis of the current state of social policy will be of interest to students and academics in social policy, social welfare and related disciplines.

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Housing, gender and care in times of crisis

Home and care are central aspects of everyday, personal lives, yet they are also shaped by political and economic change. Within a context of austerity, economic restructuring, worsening inequality and resource rationing, the policies and experiences around these key areas are shifting. Taking an interdisciplinary and feminist perspective, this book illustrates how economic and political changes affect everyday lives for many families and households in the UK. Setting out both new empirical material and new conceptual terrain, the authors draw on approaches from human geography, social policy, and feminist and political theory to explore issues of home and care in times of crisis.

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Polish women’s perspectives from inside the UK

How has the Brexit vote affected EU migrants to the UK?

This book presents a female Polish perspective, using findings from research carried out with migrants interviewed before and after the Brexit vote – voices of real people who made their home in the UK. It looks at how migrants view Brexit and what it means for them, how their experiences compare pre- and post-Brexit vote, and their future plans, as well as considering the wider implications of the migrant experience in relation to precarity and the British paid labour market.

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Survival and Resistance in France and Britain

In the first book of its kind, Bassel and Emejulu explore minority women’s experiences of and resistances to austerity measures in France and Britain. Minority women are often portrayed as passive victims. However, Minority women and austerity demonstrates how they use their race, class, gender and legal status as a resource for collective action in the face of the neoliberal colonisation of non-governmental organisations, the failures of left-wing politics and the patronising initiatives of policy-makers.

Using in-depth case studies, this book explores the changing relations between the state, the market and civil society which create opportunities and dilemmas for minority women activists. Through an intersectional ‘politics of survival’ these women seek to subvert the dominant narratives of ‘crisis’ and ‘activism’.

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