It is frequently suggested that working at home will be the future of work for many people in the UK and that trends in this direction are already well underway. This paper examines these claims by analysing data from the Labour Force Survey which has, at various times, asked questions about the location of work. Seven key hypotheses are identified, including issues surrounding the extent and growth of working at home, reliance on information and communication technology, prevalence of low pay, average pay rates, gender issues, ethnic minority participation and household composition. The results paint a variegated and complex picture which suggests that those who work at home do not comprise a homogeneous group. The paper in particular highlights differences between non-manual and manual workers, and those who work mainly, partially and sometimes at home.

This paper examines the organisation and performance of household work among dual earner couples of working age. Utilising data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) 1994 the research employs linear modelling techniques in order to model the variables associated with both the time spent on household work and the sharing of household work between men and women living together. In particular, household circumstances and characteristics of partners are considered as independent variables. The findings show that the time men and women spend in paid employment, their partners' time in paid employment, economic power, attitudes, social class and presence of children emerge as variables significantly associated with the two measures of household work performance. The explained variation for time spent on household work is also much higher for women than men. The results show that women continue to carry a ‘dual burden’ of paid and unpaid work which disadvantages them in terms of employment, income and welfare.

The expansion of the parental leave scheme in Norway, which now grants extensive rights to employed fathers, has occured in a period of great changes in working life. The equality politics of the welfare state have been explicitly focussed on bringing reproduction more into the open in working life by allowing mothers and fathers the right to stay at home on leave when they have children. To have working life adapt to family life is, however, in contrast with the new trends in working life whereby some workplaces are becoming more and more seductive and greedy. In this article we examine two different types of leave with regard to standardisation and flexibilisation, and ask what type is most successful considering central characteristics of late-modern working life such as individualism and choice, flexible working hours and boundless jobs. Findings show that the majority of fathers use the compulsory leave while the uptake of the flexible leave is inhibited by considerations of its impact on men's employment.

In recent years, much cross-national research on women's work has focused on the impact of the state in creating the conditions to enable women to combine paid work and motherhood. However, when dealing with women's domestic responsibilities, this research has concentrated heavily on caring functions, whilst largely ignoring the importance of other basic household chores. Furthermore, few studies have addressed the question of how state policy concerning women, work and childcare impacts on the ways in which parenting and domestic duties are constructed and distributed between mothers, fathers and others in the everyday experiences of individuals. The present article addresses both of these questions through evidence gathered from a qualitative cross-national comparative study of the child-care strategies of two groups of women, one French and one British, working in secretarial or clerical occupations, living with a partner and with at least one child aged under twelve. Minimal differences concerning the gender division of domestic and parenting work are discovered between these two national groups. This finding is then used to question some of the theoretical perspectives regarding the relationship between women's greater participation in employment and men's greater participation in domestic and parenting work.

Tackling social exclusion is at the heart of current British social policy, yet the concept remains ‘essentially contested’. Here we report on the transitional experiences (school to work, parental home to independent household, family of origin to family of destination) of young people (eighteen to twenty-five years) with low educational qualifications living in two areas of rural Scotland. Through in-depth interviews we explore: whether labour market participation always enhances social inclusion and, if so, in what ways; how young people experience and balance the relationship between labour market participation and demands (and their priorities) in other areas, such as family life, education and housing; and how age, gender, lifecourse stage and local opportunities affect labour market participation and social inclusion. The findings challenge the political rhetoric that all employment is broadly equivalent with respect to promoting social inclusion. We argue that to develop further the concept of social inclusion it is necessary to examine and promote ‘opportunity’, something which in turn rests upon the twin elements of available ‘resources’ and accessible ‘arenas’.

This article draws on data generated in semi-structured interviews to describe changes in social capital in the form of social networks across two generations of male school leavers. The article achieves this by comparing and contrasting the school-to-work transitions of eleven poorly qualified males, who left school in the late 1990s, to the transitions made by their fathers in the years between 1955 and 1980. The data show that the value of the social networks available to today's school leavers has declined in comparison to the value of the networks that were available to their fathers. It is argued that the decline in the value of social networks has contributed to risk and uncertainty in school-to-work transitions.

Belgian policy-makers are coming to regard the Netherlands as a ‘model’. Belgian observers commenting on the ‘Dutch miracle’ frequently refer to the greater flexibility of the deployment of labour. The share taken by temporary employment is indeed much lower in Belgium. The OECD links this ‘shortfall’ to an excess of protective regulations (Belgosclerosis). In this paper we critically evaluate the theoretical arguments cited for relaxing the right of dismissal and the use of flexible forms of employment. On the basis of this theoretical exercise, we compare the Belgian and Dutch policies on dismissal protection, prevention of dismissal and temporary employment. We examine whether differences in institutional embedding lead to differences in the way in which companies seek to achieve flexibility. The main conclusion is that the institutional frameworks of Belgium and the Netherlands have been built up along different lines. Dutch legislation encourages contractual flexibility. Belgian legislation focuses more on temporal flexibility. A competition for the greatest flexibility has little point given these observations. It is not a question of ‘more’ or ‘less’, but of ‘different’ flexibility. The wider significance of the comparison is that it clearly demonstrates that the compromise between flexibility and stability (and job security) can be forged in different ways.

Ethnic minority business activity has often been presented as a vehicle for ‘upward mobility’ for owners and workers alike. Much attention has focused upon the owners themselves. The co-ethnic labour that such employers usually rely upon has often been treated as unproblematic. This paper aims to illuminate the experiences of workers in ethnic minority owned restaurants. In particular, the widely held view that working in a co-ethnic firm serves as an ‘apprenticeship’ for eventual self-employment is explored.

Rather than co-ethnic ties, workers' labour market experiences highlight the importance of the ‘opportunity structure’ in shaping employment choices. The evidence of the current research suggests that the goal of self-employment was not widely held; and although many workers did move around to acquire better paid work, this was not part of a strategic route to becoming a restaurateur. Some workers did cherish such ambitions, but were inhibited by major obstacles. These included intense competition, high start-up costs, and a lack of ‘know-how’. The labour market and social context of the firm often militated against the hazardous proposition of self-employment.

Over the last three decades, modern capitalist economies have experienced significant changes in the structure of industry, the nature of production and the organisation of work. There has been a decline in traditional industries such as manufacturing, construction and mining and a growth in social, personal, financial and commercial services, as well as a stabilisation or decline in public employment (Ebbinghaus and Visser 1999:141–2). Technological changes have transformed production in modern economies by expanding the possibilities for flexible and decentralised production techniques. There has been an associated increase in the role of knowledge and the importance of product and process innovation. A set of strategies for managing the workforce has emerged in response to perceived changes in the structure of industry and the organisation of production including ‘reengineering’ and ‘de-layering’, which are thought to reflect the increased need for worker participation and autonomy in the new production regime.

Frank Coffield (ed.), 1: Learning at Work, Bristol: Policy Press, 1998, paper £13.99, v+69 pp.

Frank Coffield (ed.), 2: Why's the Beer always Stronger up North?: Studies in Lifelong Learning in Europe, Bristol: Policy Press, 1999, paper £13.99, v+81 pp.

Frank Coffield (ed.) 3: Speaking Truth to Power: Research and Policy on Lifelong Learning, Bristol: Policy Press, 1999, paper £13.99, v+85 pp.

Frank Coffield (ed.) 4: The Necessity of Informal Learning, Bristol: Policy Press, 2000, paper £13.99, v+80 pp.

These four linked volumes are the first co-ordinated output from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Research Programme, ‘The Learning Society: Knowledge and Skills for Employment’, directed by Frank Coffield. It was officially described thus:

‘The Programme is a response to the growing national consensus that the UK needs to transform radically its thinking and practice in relation to education and training if it is to survive as a major economic power with a high quality of life, political freedom and social justice for all its citizens.

The aim of the Programme is to examine the nature of what has been called a learning society and to explore the ways in which it can contribute to the development of knowledge and skills for employment and other areas of adult life. The Programme focuses on post-compulsory education, training and continuing education in a wide variety of contexts, both formal and informal’ (Cited in the introduction to all 4 volumes)

Kate Purcell, Terence Hogarth and Claire Simm, Whose Flexibility?: The Costs and Benefits of ‘Non-Standard’ Working Arrangements and Contractual Relations, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1999, £13.95, 73 pp.

Ursula Huws, Nick Jagger and Siobhan O'Regan, Teleworking and Globalisation, Institute for Employment Studies Report 358, 1999, xiii+103 pp.

Many workers find themselves in increasingly vulnerable employment situations: the search for employment and for employment security is a constant concern which is heightened by employers' adoption of certain strategies for numerical flexibility. At the same time new telecommunication technologies are being used to change the nature of the labour process and the spatial organisation of work, as employers relocate work to more favourable environments with new, cheaper and more pliable workforces. In Whose Flexibility? the authors seek to discover what factors influence the use and selection of strategies for the enhancement of numerical flexibility, and what costs and benefits are associated with such strategies in the British context. In this thoughtful piece of research the authors do not view potential gains and losses merely in terms of financial savings. Their work is strengthened by the acknowledgement of the need to consider the impact on the ‘psychological contract’, that is the informal arrangements and commitments employers and employees might reasonably expect of each other, such as staying late to complete a job in return for flexibility with childcare.

Desmond King, In the Name of Liberalism: Illiberal Social Policy in the United States and Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, xiii+340 pp.

Sanford M. Jacoby, Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997, xii+345 pp.

These are two substantial and important books. They cover different terrain, but both make significant observations about the nature of social policy and the environment in which it is determined. Desmond King's work examines the framing of the notion of citizenship in the context of the American and British states' claims to be liberal and democratic polities. In particular he investigates the manner in which ‘out’ groups in these two societies have been, and continue to be, treated differentially. Sanford Jacoby's concern is to trace the history of welfare capitalism in the United States and to assess how the various paternalistic models of the workplace were affected by and, in turn, how they affected, the evolution of state provided welfare and the development of the organised labour movement.

Pepper Culpepper and David Finegold (eds.), The German Skills Machine: Sustaining Comparative Advantage in a Global Economy, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999, £56.00, xii+482 pp.

Peter Raggatt and Steve Williams, Government, Markets and Vocational Qualifications: An Anatomy of Policy, London and New York: Falmer Press, 1999, £16.99, x+220 pp.

These two books complement each other in their studies of vocational education and training (VET) policy. Current German policy debate, like English VET policy in the 1980s, is haunted by the ghost of the apparently perfect performance of German VET in the 1980s and its role in producing a high skills high wage economy. The benefits of paradise were always unevenly distributed to ‘outsiders’, but the rewards for German male skilled workers were impressive. I wonder though whether the almost universal approbation of the German VET system at that time, by policy makers and commentators from other countries, was at least partly influenced by the fact that it was a system where those interested in VET were themselves considered important. They were not pushed to the margins as so often happens elsewhere. Here was a system where those interested in VET were treated with respect.

Jane E. Ferrie, Michael G. Marmot, John Griffiths and Erio Ziglio (eds.), Labour Market Changes and Job Insecurity: A Challenge For Social Welfare and Health Promotion, Copenhagen, Denmark: WHO Regional Publications, European Series, No. 81, 1999, paper, Sw.fr. 52, xiii+252 pp.

Jens Lind and Iver Hornemann Møller (eds.), Inclusion and Exclusion: Unemployment and Non-Standard Employment in Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999, £37.50, x+230 pp.

John Vail, Jane Wheelock and Michael Hill (eds.), Insecure Times: Living and Insecurity in Contemporary Society, London: Routledge, 1999, £16.99, xii+234 pp.

Brendan Burchell, Diana Day, Maria Hudson, David Lapido, Roy Mankelow, Jane P. Nolan, Hannah Reed, Ines C. Wichert and Frank Wilkinson, Job Insecurity and Work Intensification: Flexibility and the Changing Boundaries of Work, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1999, paper, £13.95, v+74 pp.

Fernando G. Benavides and Joan Benach, Precarious Employment and Health-Related Outcomes in the European Union, Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 1999, EUR 16, xii+61 pp.

Labour market change – specifically increases in labour market flexibility, insecurity and precariousness – and its wider socio-economic impact is the common theme of all the texts considered here. Vail et al., Insecure Times explore the concept of insecurity within a broader theoretical frame, examining theories of capitalism, the state and various dimensions of social policy as well as labour market developments and employment policy. Lind and Møller's Inclusion and Exclusion focuses on the relationship between labour markets, their structuring and employment and welfare policies in four European countries. The focus here is on social inclusion and exclusion, and on the different policy responses which have been adopted or advocated in different societal and political contexts. Insecure Times and Inclusion and Exclusion will both give much food for thought to the general interest reader and to students of sociology and social policy, and their needs are discussed in the second part of this review below.

Dorothy Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State and the Logic of the Market, University of California Press, 1999, £40.00, paper £14.95, xvii+444 pp.

Brian Owensby, Intimate Ironies: Modernity and the Making of Middle-Class Lives in Brazil, Stanford University Press, 1999, £27.50, ix+332 pp.

Stephen Alomes, When London Calls: The Expatriation of Australian Creative Artists to Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1999, £35.00, paper £12.95, xiv+320 pp.

The studies that form the basis for these three books all take a historical and longitudinal approach, with varying foci, on processes which can be seen to be entwined with globalisation, marketisation and internationalisation as they explore identity formation in response to changing world and economic conditions. Within these global processes each book demonstrates the scope for individual action within three rather different institutional contexts. In this review I focus on a single theme to examine the manner in which the ties of family and personal networks impact upon the ability of these actors to forge their identities. I begin by providing an extremely brief introduction to each of the studies as a context for exploring how we can see the role of family networks and personal connections as significant influences on the experiences of the actors involved.