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This article tracks workers’ responses to redundancy and impact on the local labour market and regional unemployment policy after the closure of a large employer, Anglesey Aluminium (AA), on Anglesey in North Wales. It questions human capital theory (HCT) and its influence on sustaining neo-liberal policy orthodoxy – focused on supplying skilled and employable workers in isolation from other necessary ingredients in the policy recipe. It is concluded that HCT and associated skills policy orthodoxy are problematic because supply of particular skills did not create demand from employers. Ex-AA workers faced a paradox of being highly skilled but underemployed. Some workers re-trained but there were insufficient (quality) job opportunities. In picking up the pieces after redundancy many workers found themselves part of a labour ‘precariat’ with little choice but to ‘make do and mend’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public participation in technological decision-making is increasingly seen as de rigueur, but the limits and purpose of such participation remain open to debate. In this paper we explore the tension between different rationales for widening participation and examine their implications for its practice. Taking debates about medical genomics in the UK as an illustrative example, we argue that more heterogeneous participation and debate have the potential to improve the scrutiny and accountability of science within representative democracies. In doing so we also argue that it is necessary to replace the language of `lay expertise' with a more systematic and rigorous treatment of the expertise or its absence that characterizes different participants. Drawing on the theoretical work of Collins & Evans (2002), we distinguish between those processes where expert knowledge is required and debate is conducted within the public domain, rather than by the public itself, and those where the views of non-expert lay citizens are needed and valued. The effect of adopting this approach is to permit a more inclusive treatment of the `technical' while also providing a positive role for non-expert citizens in the democratic control and oversight of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]