This book responds to global tendencies toward increasingly restrictive border controls and populist movements targeting migrants for violence and exclusion. Informed by Marxist theory, it challenges standard narratives about immigration and problematises commonplace distinctions between ‘migrants’ and ‘workers’. Using Britain as a case study, the book examines how these categories have been constructed and mobilised within representations of a ‘migrant crisis’ and a ‘welfare crisis’ to fa...

Between August 2022 and July 2024, GMB Union membership at Amazon’s BHX4 Coventry warehouse skyrocketed, with 37 days of strike action resulting in a 28.5% pay rise. Yet despite this, the union narrowly lost a ballot that would have forced Amazon to grant formal recognition.Based on ethnographic research and reflective essays from worker-leaders and organizers, this book offers a rich case study of the factors contributing to the union’s successes and setbacks. It provides a practi...

Between August 2022 and July 2024, GMB Union membership at Amazon’s BHX4 Coventry warehouse skyrocketed, with 37 days of strike action resulting in a 28.5% pay rise. Yet despite this, the union narrowly lost a ballot that would have forced Amazon to grant formal recognition.Based on ethnographic research and reflective essays from worker-leaders and organizers, this book offers a rich case study of the factors contributing to the union’s successes and setbacks. It provides a practi...

Today, in a period of economic crisis, public sector cuts and escalating class struggle, Marxism offers important tools for social workers and service users to understand the structures of oppression they face and devise effective means of resistance. This book uses Marxism's lost insights and reinterprets them in the current context by focussing on one particular section of the international working class - refugees and asylum seekers in Britain. Vickers' analysis demonstrates the general...

Expanded for the occasion of ZZ Top’s 50th anniversary, Billy F Gibbons: Rock + Roll Gearhead throws wide Gibbons’ garage and studio doors for an exclusive look at his exquisite collection of cars and guitars.Love cars, guitars, and ZZ Top? This visually stunning tour through this Grade-A Texas gearhead's weird, wild life, vintage and way-out custom guitars, and influential hot rods and custom cars is mand...

SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN AND TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017'A provocative take on the UK's new tribal divisions ... a book whose timing is pitch-perfect' Andrew MarrMany Remainers reported waking up the day after the Brexit vote feeling as if they were living in a foreign country. In fact, they were merely experiencing the same feeling that many British people have felt every day for years.Fifty years ago, people i...

Welfare states vary across nations and change over time. And the balance between markets and government; free enterprise and social protection is perennially in question. But all developed societies have welfare states of one kind or another - they are a fundamental dimension of modern government. And even after decades of free-market criticism and reform, their core institutions have proven resilient and popular. This Very Short Introduction describes the modern welfare state, ex...

Global economic crisis and the implications of global environmental change have led academics and policy-makers to consider how ‘development’ in all parts of the world should be achieved. However, ‘development’ has always been a contested idea. While often presented as a positive process to improve people’s lives, the potential negative dimensions of ‘development’ on people and environments must also be recognized.Theories and Practices of Development provides a clear and ...

In the context of renewed debates about diversity and cohesion, this book interrogates contemporary claims about race and migration. It demonstrates that many of the claims are myths, presenting evidence in support of and in opposition to them in an accessible yet academically rigorous manner.The book combines an easy-to-read overview of the subject with innovative new research. It tackles head-on questions about levels of immigration, the contribution of immigrants, minority self-...

This far-reaching study examines how political policies and paradigms have deepened global inequality, and how to reframe the debate to address it.Inequality is the defining issue of our time—one in which the global 1% now owns half the world's wealth. In this magisterial study, Simon Reid-Henry rewrites the story of globalization as one about the management of inequality. Reaching back to the eighteenth century, The Political Origins of Inequality foregrou...

*** Winner of the Myrdal Prize for Evolutionary Political Economy ***The last few years have seen the spectacular failure of market fundamentalism in Europe and the US, with a seemingly never-ending spate of corporate scandals and financial crises. As the environmental limits and socially destructive tendencies of the current profit-driven economic model become daily more self-evident, there is a growing demand for a fairer economic alternative, as evidenced by the mounting campaig...

Although a powerful, independent bureaucracy poses a threat to democracy, it is indispensable to its proper functioning. This book provides an overview of the complex relationship between bureaucracy and the politics of democracy and is essential reading for students of sociology, political science and public administration. It is designed to guide students through the maze of classical and modern theories on the topic, to give them basic information on the historical developments in this ...