Social and Public Policy - Research

Winner of the British Society of Criminology Annual Book Prize 2022. This valuable exploration of work duality calls for recognition of the experiences of sex workers, featuring the accounts of individuals who take extraordinary risks to hold jobs in both sex industries and non-sex work employment.

This book explores how children, young people and families cope with situations of socio-economic poverty and precarity in diverse international contexts and looks at the evidence of the harms and inequalities caused by these processes.

This landmark book charts the rollercoaster history of both rich and poor, and the mechanisms that link them. Stewart Lansley examines the ideological rifts that have driven society back to the divisions of the past and asks why rich and poor citizens are still judged by very different standards.

This timely analysis sets out the full impacts of policy reform, austerity and marketisation on our country’s mental health services. Rooted in the experiences of service users and providers, it provides valuable perspectives on our evolving practical and organisational responses to mental distress.

This book shows how the speech and syntax of low-income female teachers in India’s education system establishes a special form of relational agency and empowerment.

Offering a much-needed analysis of the overlooked crisis of food poverty in Ireland, this book brings together the complex picture emerging from interviews with users of food aid, explores the international landscape of food poverty and what action should be taken.

This edited collection analyses recent changes in the private rental housing market, using case studies from the UK, Europe, Australia and the USA, and assesses the initial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Based on the Transforming Lives research project, this book explores the transformative power of further education. Outlining a critical approach to educational research and practice, the book draws on the testimonies of students and teachers to construct a model of transformative teaching and learning.

Bringing together philosophical insights with social theory, this book develops a better understanding of the role luck plays in generating and reinforcing inequality. The author offers a political economy of life chances and an analysis of durable and demonstrable social inequalities, revealing how they are sustained and reproduced.

This book tackles the prevailing contradiction within policy analysis, that rigorous thought should be uncontaminated by values, despite policy analysis being inherently values based. In resolving the issue, this book provides a new, solid foundation for policy analysis.

Paul Spicker offers an original take on the British welfare state. He outlines the structure of services, the impact of false narratives, the real problems that need to be addressed and how we can do things better.

Welfare states are a major feature of many societies. This book draws on qualitative interviews with people receiving various working age welfare payments in Ireland to analyse welfare conditionality and explore stigma, social reciprocity and the notions of the deserving and undeserving poor.