SOCIETY & CULTURE: GENERAL

Creating a more open society and improving race equality are core current policy concerns and understanding the roles of class and ethnicity in determining life chances is critical. This report aids such understanding by investigating the impact of class background and ethnicity on class position. Free PDF available at www.jrf.org.uk

Working futures? looks at the current effectiveness and future scope for enabling policy in the field of disability and employment.

All over Europe post-Second World War large-scale housing estates face physical, economic, social and cultural problems. This book presents the key findings of a major EU-funded research programme into the restructuring of twenty-nine large-scale housing estates in Northern, Western, Southern and Eastern Europe.

One of the key objectives of government neighbourhood policy is to encourage a sustainable mix of tenures and incomes. This report addresses questions of why integration has been so difficult to achieve in practice and draws conclusions for future policy.

FREE pdf version available online at www.jrf.org.uk

This book is the most authoritative study of poverty and social exclusion in Britain at the start of the 21st century. It reports on the most comprehensive survey of poverty and social exclusion, ever to be undertaken in Britain: The Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey.

This book is the first specifically to explore methodological issues relating to the involvement of refugees in both service evaluation and development and research. It builds on a two-year seminar series funded by the ESRC where the participants jointly drew up a set of good practice guidelines that are re-produced in the book for the first time.

What is it like to be a child growing up in Britain these days? Is it a happy or anxious time? What are the best and worst aspects of being a child today? This book draws on accounts of over two thousand children and five hundred adults, to examine the present day meaning of childhood and its implications for policy and practice.

In the UK there is increasing acceptance that credit unions have an important role to play in providing affordable credit to all sections of society. This study identifies current patterns of credit union development, quantifies their performance and isolates factors which make some more successful than others. Free PDF available at www.jrf.org.uk

This book explores issues of ethnicity, identity and racialised exclusion in rural Britain, in depth and for the first time. It questions what the countryside 'is', problematises who is seen as belonging to rural spaces, and argues for the recognition of a rural multiculture.

Despite the improved supply and quality of housing in the UK and Europe, the future of housing remains uncertain. Is decent, affordable housing an achievable goal? How far will governments seek to shape the market and respond to demographic pressures? This book looks at the big questions housing as a key indicator of social and economic well-being.

To understand contemporary ageing it is necessary to recognise its diversity. Drawing on an extraordinary range of theory, original research and empirical sources, this book assesses the stereotyped conceptions of ageing, and offers a critical and updated perspective.

Much of the recent policy debate surrounding poverty in Britain focuses on income as a measure of living standards. In this report we consider one alternative to income for measuring poverty that has been largely overlooked in the mainstream poverty debate in the UK: namely household expenditure. Free PDF version available at www.jrf.org.uk