SOCIAL SCIENCE / Social Classes & Economic Disparity

This book brings Brian Jackson and Dennis Marsden’s pioneering Education and the Working Class from 1962 up to date for the 21st century and reveals what we can do to achieve a fairer education system.

Telling the stories of low-income families, this book exposes the ways that pre-existing inequalities, insecurities and hardships were amplified during the pandemic in the UK and offers key policy recommendations for change.

Lisa Mckenzie lived on the notorious St Ann’s estate in Nottingham for more than 20 years. Her ‘insider’ status enables us to hear the stories of its residents, often wary of outsiders, to give a unique account of life in poor communities in contemporary Britain.

How does the billionaire class get away with sequestering the world’s wealth while others languish in poverty and hunger? This incisive book examines myths that portray billionaires as a ‘force for good’ and concrete actions to support economic justice and democratic equality.

This important book takes readers behind the closed doors of elite employers to reveal how class affects who gets to the top. Drawing on 200 interviews across four case studies - television, accountancy, architecture, and acting – it explores the complex barriers facing the upwardly mobile.

Why we can’t afford the rich exposes the unjust and dysfunctional mechanisms that allow the top 1% to siphon off wealth produced by others. With an updated Afterword, Andrew Sayer shows how the rich worldwide have increased their ability to hide their wealth, create indebtedness and expand their political influence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically exposed weaknesses in UK housing, with housing inequality contributing to the unequal impact of the disease. Becky Tunstall assesses the position of housing in public policy and health, and the most immediate responses to the pandemic in one convenient resource for students, scholars and practitioners.

Drawing on unique new research gathered from three contrasting secondary schools in England, this book explores the aspirations, opportunities and experiences of young people from different social-class backgrounds against a backdrop of continuing inequalities in education.

This important text maps out ways in which the disadvantaged have been affected by legal responses to COVID-19. Contributors tackle issues including virtual trials, adult social care, racism, tax and spending, education and more. Offering an account of the damage, this book demonstrates positive and productive future responses.

This book seeks to understand the motivation behind retirement migration and how precarity in later life contributes to this trend.

Drawing on theoretical and empirical studies, this book offers a unique and timely reformulation of socialism adapted to current challenges. It makes explicit the ‘silent utopia’ of intersectionality theory and lays the conceptual groundwork for an emancipatory politics.

As the population ages, this book reveals how divides that are apparent through childhood and working life change and are added to in later life.