Publisher's Synopsis
The authors of this book look at why different areas of a city can all have high levels of long-term unemployment, but for different reasons. In seeking to uncover the different local constructions of unemployment this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of why people become and remain unemployed. Providing a wide-ranging and a challenging theoretical overview, the book then adopts a unique multi-stranded methodological approach to the issue of local pockets of high long-term unemployment. Focusing on Bradford in West Yorkshire, the book examines a multi-cultural inner city area, a 'white' outer estate and a satellite town. Using a skills survey, community discussion panel and interviews with many keen actors, the study is able to identify both general and specific labour market barriers which lead to very different local geographies of unemployment. The book finishes with suggestions as to how the institutions and policies ostensibly responding to long-term unemployment could be better targeted to local needs.
