Ann Nilsen - Böcker

Long-running trends towards increasing inequality between the rich and poor across Europe have been exacerbated by the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath. As employment opportunities for young people diminish and as the welfare state is pulled back, pathways to adulthood change and become more difficult to navigate.Transitions to Adulthood Through Recession consists of a collection of papers by researchers from Britain, Norway, Germany, Portugal, Italy and Greece, locating young people’s transitions to adulthood in their national social, economic and political contexts. It explores young adulthood with reference to generational continuity and change and intergenerational support. With a cross-national comparative framework, this volume highlights the importance of variations in structural contexts for young people’s transitions. Bringing together authors across sub-disciplines such as the sociology of youth, family and kinship, class and inequality and life-course studies, Transitions to Adulthood Through Recession will appeal to academic social scientists as well as final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as political science, sociology, youth studies, social policy, anthropology and psychology; and a wider public readership.

Long-running trends towards increasing inequality between the rich and poor across Europe have been exacerbated by the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath. As employment opportunities for young people diminish and as the welfare state is pulled back, pathways to adulthood change and become more difficult to navigate.Transitions to Adulthood Through Recession consists of a collection of papers by researchers from Britain, Norway, Germany, Portugal, Italy and Greece, locating young people’s transitions to adulthood in their national social, economic and political contexts. It explores young adulthood with reference to generational continuity and change and intergenerational support. With a cross-national comparative framework, this volume highlights the importance of variations in structural contexts for young people’s transitions. Bringing together authors across sub-disciplines such as the sociology of youth, family and kinship, class and inequality and life-course studies, Transitions to Adulthood Through Recession will appeal to academic social scientists as well as final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as political science, sociology, youth studies, social policy, anthropology and psychology; and a wider public readership.Chapter 1 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

C. Wright Mills is one of the towering figures in contemporary sociology and his writings continue to be of great relevance to the social science community. Generations of sociology students have enjoyed learning about the discipline from reading his best known book The Sociological Imagination. Over the years the title has become a term in itself with a variety of interpretations, many far removed from the original. The chapters in Part One of this book begins with general issues around the nature and significance of the sociological imagination, continue through discussions of modes of theorising and historical explanation, the relationship between history and biography, and the intellectual and political relationship of Mills to Marxism. They conclude with considerations on issues of class, power, and warfare. Part Two of the book includes a series of reflections from scholars who were invited to give personal thoughts on the impact of Mills's writings in their sociological work, with particular attention to their own 'biography and history'.With renowned international contributors and expert contributions from a range of specialisms, this book will appeal to academics, students and researchers of sociology.Contributors: D. Bertaux, J. Brannen, J.D. Brewer, O. Brox, K. Kumar, K. Mills, L. Mjøset, M. Newman, A. Nilsen, O.J. Olsen, J. Platt, M. Savage, J. Scott, A.J. Treviño

Across Europe the importance of reconciling paid work and family life is increasingly recognised by a range of diverse government regulations and organisational initiatives. At the same time, employing organisations and the nature of work are undergoing massive and rapid changes, in the context of global competition, efficiency drives, as well as social and economic transformations in emerging economies. "Work, families and organisations in transition" illustrates how workplace practices and policies impact on employees' experiences of "work-life balance" in contemporary shifting contexts. Based upon cross-national case studies of public and private sector workplaces carried out in Bulgaria, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK, this innovative book demonstrates the challenges that parents face as they seek to negotiate work and family boundaries. The case studies demonstrate that employed parents' needs and experiences depend on many layers of context - global, European, national, workplace and family. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of organisational psychology, sociology, management and business studies, human resource management, social policy, as well as employers, managers, trade unions and policy makers.

This book takes a life course perspective, analysing and comparing the biographies of mothers and fathers in seven European countries in context. Based on an innovative, cross-national EU study, it examines the ways in which working parents negotiate the transition to parenthood and attempt to find a 'work-life balance'. Using in-depth qualitative biographical data, the book offers a deep understanding of working parents' real lives by locating them within diverse national, workplace and family contexts. It provides rich insights into how policies and practices at the institutional level play out in individual and family lives, how they shape the decisions during both transition phases and in parents' daily experiences of juggling work and family life. It highlights some difficult and complex issues about the sustainability of contemporary working practices for bringing up children that are highly relevant in times of economic retrenchment. 'Transitions to parenthood in Europe' will be of interest to an academic readership at all levels of the social sciences, as well as employers, managers, trade unions and policy makers.

This book takes a life course perspective, analysing and comparing the biographies of mothers and fathers in seven European countries in context. Based on an innovative, cross-national EU study, it examines the ways in which working parents negotiate the transition to parenthood and attempt to find a 'work-life balance'. Using in-depth qualitative biographical data, the book offers a deep understanding of working parents' real lives by locating them within diverse national, workplace and family contexts. It provides rich insights into how policies and practices at the institutional level play out in individual and family lives, how they shape the decisions during both transition phases and in parents' daily experiences of juggling work and family life. It highlights some difficult and complex issues about the sustainability of contemporary working practices for bringing up children that are highly relevant in times of economic retrenchment. 'Transitions to parenthood in Europe' will be of interest to an academic readership at all levels of the social sciences, as well as employers, managers, trade unions and policy makers.