Working Lives Gender, Migration and Employment in Britain, 1945-2007

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

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).

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

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