Introduction

This book is about processes of labour market detachment among adult men. As later chapters show, in recent years detachment from the labour market has become an increasingly important phenomenon, with significant economic and social consequences. Yet it cannot be explained in terms of any single factor – men's attitudes or personal characteristics, for example, or employers' decisions to close or restructure workplaces. As a research team, our interest in the processes of labour market detachment arose partly from the observation that, in the early and mid-1990s, inadequate opportunities in the British labour market were being reflected not only in continuing high levels of unemployment, but also in rising levels of economic inactivity. This was particularly the case in certain local labour markets where major industrial restructuring had occurred. We were also stimulated by a developing literature on how employment behaviour and labour market participation were influenced by welfare systems and social security regimes (Esping-Andersen 1990). Finally, we were interested in how far changes in men's social and family roles, affected both by women's rising rates of labour force participation and by the proliferation of different types of household structure, were shaping changes to traditional expectations about men's working lives.

What do we mean by detachment from the labour force? Labour market analysis uses a range of measures to assess levels of participation in the labour force: employment, unemployment and a variety of types of ‘economic inactivity’.