Working Lives

Linda McDowell is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oxford. She is a Fellow of St John’s College, where she is the Director of the Research Centre, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Widely published and well-known as a feminist ethnographer of labour and employment, her books include Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City (Blackwell, 1997), Gender, Identity and Place (1999), Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working-Class Youth (Blackwell, 2003), Hard Labour (2005) and Working Bodies: Interactive Service Employment and Workplace Identities (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

“A compelling and comprehensive analysis of how gender, ethnicity, and class intersect within the labor market. McDowell’s feminist theoretical lens allows her to investigate and problematize the ways that migrant women are often marginalized and normalized as docile and apolitical. Furthermore, her careful and detailed use of migrant women’s narratives brings great empirical depth to the book. Within studies of migration, labor, and gender, McDowell’s book is an important contribution to the literature on international migration. It offers a detailed historical examination of migrant women in the United Kingdom and is a rich example of how a critical feminist approach can allow us to investigate the marginalization of migrants and normalization of gender issues.” (The International Migration Review, Summer 2015)“It remains that Working Lives is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement and will remain for the foreseeable future a key text for anyone interested in the history of migrant women and migrants more generally in post-war Britain.”  (Oral History, 1 May 2015)“In what is a very refreshing contrast to many of the more recent accounts of immaterial labor, which tend to focus on the highly skilled and well-paid sectors of the labor market and, to a great extent, on an undifferentiated image of the postindustrial worker, McDowell foregrounds the actual laboring bodies of migrant women, marked as they are by gender, skin color, nationality, class, ethnicity, and other signs of difference.”   (Economic Geography, 1 January 2015)“Recommended.  Upper-division undergraduates and above.”  (Choice, 1 February 2014)Review appeared in http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/working-lives-gender-migration-and-employment-in-britain-1945-2007-by-linda-mcdowell/2007939.article" (Times Higher Education - 10 October 2013)“McDowell provides intriguing, important insights into the female immigrant experience, drawing selectively on interviews with sections of this complex shifting population.  It is too diverse an experience to survey comprehensively in a short book, but it whets my appetite for a fuller version that draws on all of the interviews she conducted.”  (Times Higher Education, 10 October 2013)

• List of Figures and Tables viii Series Editors’ Preface xPreface: Leaving Home and Looking for Work xiPart One Migration and Mobilities 11 Leaving Home: Migration and Working Lives 32 Gendering Labour Geographies and Histories 193 The Transformation of Britain 51Part Two Out to Work: Embodied Genealogies 694 Post-war Reconstruction, 1945–1951 715 Coming Home: The Heart of Empire, 1948–1968 956 Years of Struggle, 1968–1979 1287 Privilege and Inequality, 1979–1997 1578 Back to the Future: Diversity and Precarious Labour, 1997–2007 1849 Full Circle, 1945–2007 213References 232Appendix: Post-war Legislation 253Index 263