Abstract
Poverty and Insecurity: Life in Low-pay, No-pay Britain provides a sustained engagement with the experience of living in poverty. The text considers those people subject to the recurrent shifts between work and unemployment and acts as an important corrective to recent political discussion which falsely frames unemployment as reflective of the deficiencies within the ‘supply’ (labour) side of the economy. The research effectively utilises detailed interviews with individuals who have experienced worklessness and in doing so illuminates the sometimes harsh and often complex realities of their lives. Below I will consider some of the most effective parts within the text that begin to rework notions of the urban poor.
The book begins with the all too common portrayal of the failures of those in poverty; ‘the poor are so because of their own failings’ (p. 1). This perception is effectively challenged throughout the text with accounts of lives which illustrate the desire for work amongst the urban poor. Despite this commitment, the insecure and precarious nature of being between unemployment and low-paid work remains. Through an analysis of individual experience of cycles between low-pay and no-pay the co-authors provide a critical development of Guy Standing’s (2011) new class category The Precariat: While it is the case that precarious sorts of work can undermine a secure work-based identity, they do not necessarily undermine work ethics. Our study found that despite work insecurity and a barrage of exhortations from welfare agencies and employers, individuals hold on to strong work motivation and work identity. (p. 26)
This theoretical contribution is made through a detailed consideration of the shared experience of ‘churning’ between welfare and low-paid jobs. In many ways the analysis parallels with Standing’s assertion of a precariat marked by an insecurity of work, but as hinted at above, this research provides an important intervention by considering the agency and experience of those people subjected to shifting labour markets. This allows an understanding of urban poverty to emerge from the perspective of those people on the ground rather than through an abstract class category. One successful method of achieving this is the use of longer quotes from interview participants throughout the empirical chapters. This approach introduces personal experience into debates about worklessness, and begins to highlight new forms of agency and the ‘getting by’ aspect of urban poverty.
The co-authors make their arguments through an engagement with the Middlesbrough area in Teesside, northeast England. This region has experienced rapid deindustrialisation since the 1970s and, whilst reflective of broader trends across the United Kingdom, has had a fairly unique trajectory in terms of working class composition as a result of this. The text details these economic conditions in Chapter 3 and highlights the relatively high levels of unemployment in the area. Middlesbrough has experienced a large shift towards the service sector, which has moulded a ‘less masculine’ labour market. More significantly perhaps, these jobs are nearly always less well paid and considerably less secure (often temporary). The book considers the impact of this shift and follows previous research that focused on youth transitions in the same area. After providing local and national contexts for the study and a brief summary of their methodology, the text considers the experience of unemployment and insecure work from two intersecting perspectives. First, through those people who are subject to this ‘churning’ and second, and more briefly, those employed with the relevant employment and welfare agencies (Chapter 4).
Chapter 5 considers the ‘work histories’ of individuals to highlight the personal commitment to work within the urban poor and also illustrates the parallels of employment and unemployment experience across different ages. Non-monetary motivations to work are highlighted here, which illustrates a strong work ethic and identity within the area. This commitment is ‘deeply embedded in class cultural expectations and attitudes’ (p. 87) and the interviews conducted reveal strong concerns about the potential impacts of long-term unemployment. Being out of work was attributed as a potential trigger for personal and social problems (rather than the other way round) as several interviewees highlighted the potential links between unemployment and drugs, crime and health problems. Chapter 8 details the actual supply side issues, such as ill health and caring for children and grandchildren, which are rarely considered in unemployment discourses. Despite these important concerns and personal difficulties, the study is keen to stress the high levels of resilience within the research area. For example, Chapter 9 provides a revealing portrayal of living in poverty and details the continuing ‘picture of compromise, hardship and struggle’ (p. 173). It also asserts that finding a job provides no guarantees of an escape from such experiences of poverty.
Whilst highlighting an enduring commitment to work and illustrating a clear resilience within the urban poor, the co-authors perhaps downplay the possibilities for agency as resistance within the study. Chapter 7 provides the first indication of a possible challenging of the conditions under which work is undertaken, through an interview with an individual who initiated strike action at a controversial and non-unionised local Turkey factory. The co-authors give only little attention to this despite their conclusions that emphasise the continued importance of workers campaigns, such as the Living Wage campaign. The political nature of such antagonisms and specific acts of work place resistance thus remain invisible. The co-author’s construction of agency within the urban poor is subsequently restricted to acts of resilience alongside the processes of capitalism rather than suggesting any possibilities for resistance against it. These acts may not have fallen within the remit of the research but one interviewee’s expression of resentment against being treated ‘like robots’ (p. 134) might provide further political possibilities for analysis.
In summary, Poverty and Insecurity: Life in Low-pay, No-pay Britain provides a vital corrective to recent portrayals of worklessness. By foregrounding the agency and experience of urban poverty the co-authors ask pertinent questions of the ‘demand’ side of the British economy. This emphasis on the actual lived experience is what allows the book to make an important contribution to debates about insecure work and unemployment. It is also clear that gaining a job does not necessarily allow people to leave poverty. There are clear problems of low pay within employment which parallel the many difficulties of gaining access to and managing welfare payments when unemployed. These barriers to escaping poverty create a ‘churning’ effect rarely raised in popular discussion regarding welfare and unemployment. Despite this disheartening reality, many participants within the study rejected poverty as a category for themselves and instead placed emphasis on their own ‘getting by’. Such emphasis on personal experience of the low-pay, no-pay cycle allows the co-authors to rightly conclude that a significant first step in reducing poverty and insecurity in Britain is to expose and destroy the myth of the welfare scrounger.