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This paper applies Marx's concept of immiseration to the mining communities of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, in an attempt to conceptualise the consequences of de-industrialisation. We identify and explore a series of specific social, economic, historical, political and geographic circumstances that have militated against the radicalisation predicted by Marx, but nonetheless conclude that the concept of immiseration continues to have contemporary relevance. Economic hardship, out-migration on an unprecedented scale and a collapse of confidence at both an individual and collective level are the consequences of de-industrialisation and reveal the contemporary experience and purpose of immiseration. First, it is a process through which a geographically isolated population of workers have become conditioned either to accept poor work in terms of lower wages and conditions, or to become economic migrants. Second, it is a process through which new opportunities for profitability and investment are established for new investors. Keywords De-industrialisation, immiseration, mining communities, out-migration, social decline, 'People suggest that regions collapse, but they don't. It's a long drawn out process that is inevitably downward.' (Senior administrator, CBRM) Introduction In his reaffirmation of Marx's concept of immiseration, [...]

This paper examines the development of the idea 'personalised conditionality' in social security policy in Britain through the report, Realising Potential, commissioned by the last of the 1997-2010 Labour governments and the documents and policies of the coalition government formed after the 2010 general election. Using the idea of active proletarianisation from Offe (1984), the paper argues that 'personalised conditionality' is part of a long and ignoble policy tradition that has criminalised workless people and held them responsible for their lack of work as a means of discouraging worklessness and forms of subsistence outside of paid work. The tensions in such a policy are discussed and it is concluded that the consequence of 'personalised conditionality' may be to detach increasing numbers of people from labour markets, rather than active proletarianisation. Keywords active proletarianisation, coalition government, conditionality, personalisation, Realising Potential, Introduction This paper is concerned with the idea of 'personalised conditionality', part of social security policy that it has been argued seeks to ensure that what is demanded of workless [...]

This paper seeks to examine the valuable concept of left agency and interrogate it in terms of an inherent paradox not immediately apparent to many who support the role of politicised activists in the workplace. This paradox is that politicised workplace activists, particularly those belonging to revolutionary organisations, may in presenting an overtly political agenda centred on extra-workplace issues actually have weakened resistance against management's aggressively profit-oriented agenda, particularly in the key period of the late-1970s and early 1980s. These arguments are further explored through an examination of approaches to workplace trade unionism by the Communist Party and International Socialism/ Socialist Workers' Party, thus linking the question of left agency in the workplace with the broader political agenda in terms of the practice and objectives of the explicitly Marxist organisations that can be assumed to be concerned with, and influence, the activity of their workplace-based members and representatives. Keywords agency, activism, class, organisation, paradox, praxis, workplace, Introduction In the current context of worldwide capitalist crisis, the issue of worker response or 'agency' comes ever more sharply into focus. The fragility revealed at the heart of capitalist [...]

The Iranian government and the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (APOC) has stifled the series of demonstration and strikes in 1929 at the Abadan oil refinery in south-western Iran. However, the first major industrial unrest experienced by Iran also gave birth to a new factor in Iranian politics called the working class. Insights on strikes anchored in cultural traditions are also given.

This article explores the perceptions and experiences of a secondary school English teacher who retains a strong sense of her own working-class origins and identity. Karen has 'crossed classes' in terms of her education and occupation but still positions herself unambiguously as working class. This article considers the ways in which classed practices invade her working life, her relationships with staff and students as well as her classroom pedagogy. The article also considers some of the ways n which subtle and not so subtle classed practices can work in schools to 'other' and exclude the working-class teacher. KEY WORDS class practices / education / inequality / social class / social mobility / teachers

In 'Questions From a Worker Who Reads,' Bertold Brecht writes evocatively of how the history of ordinary people is forsaken in favor of the stories of kings and emperors. 'Every [...]

Signposts This article shows that, although some aspects of social class might have changed, class itself is far from dead in Britain. There is a useful summary of different views […]

Scholars see the gendered division of household labor as a stronghold of gender inequality. We explore changes in household labor and gender relations when conservative, working-class families experience employment disruptions. Using data from 49 qualitative interviews conducted with men and women following the forced unemployment of breadwinning husbands, we observe some change in gendered household labor but conclude that a significant degendering of housework is thwarted by institutional-, interactive-, and individual-level processes. At the institutional level, the lack of well-paying jobs and the persistent gendering of household tasks discourage change. At the individual level, challenges to gendered identities encourage a reinforcement of traditional gender ideologies. At the interactional level, women's responsibility for care work and the meaning of paid work for unemployed husbands forestall the adjustment of tasks.

The policy objectives of a Sweden's government bill, in a study of information and communication technology (ICT) used among Swedish working-class citizens are highlighted. This bill focused on Sweden's aim of becoming an information society for all its citizens.

Youngstown State University's (Ohio) Center for Working-Class Studies received $350,000 from the Ford Foundation to expand on some of its projects such as an oral history program and the establishment [...]