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2 Employment and unemployment on Merseyside, 1945–98 Throughout the late twentieth century, the presence of mass unemployment was a consistent feature of Merseyside. Indeed, for much of this period the name Liverpool itself became synonymous with joblessness and all the negative images such deprived circumstances suggest. In this chapter, Liverpool’s connection to unemployment in the late twentieth century is charted. Prior to analysing economic trends and their relationship to employment and joblessness on Merseyside, we shall address the complexity of
of digital work within refugee communities in general and women’s rights groups in particular ( Hunt et al. , 2017 ). The case of Jordan is particularly revealing – a country that continues to have one of the highest youth and female unemployment rates in the world ( IFC, 2021 ). Despite the slow transition to digital work, refugees are not commonly perceived to be part of this transition. As demonstrated below, considerable challenges – including
uncertainty of active unemployment becomes the global work norm, the chronically poor and the disaster-affected have blurred. In an unmediated relationship with their environments, they are both subject to permanent emergency. They constantly change place and, at a time when economy and disaster have blurred, from a post-humanitarian perspective, they become indistinguishable. Since resilience is now equally required of the poor and exposed – as well as the ‘first responders’ – the traditional distinction between developmental and humanitarian relief
programme to shift its attention to those few opportunities that the local market could provide. However, under the impact of the recent economic and financial crisis, these opportunities have increasingly faded too. In a span of less than three years, Lebanon went from a country known for its growing middle class to one with an inflation rate of over 240 per cent 8 and a dramatic unemployment rate 50.1 per cent in 2022 (16.2 per cent in 2018–19). 9 As part of ‘Future of Food
households transcend the local level, taking into account the contribution (or lack of contribution) of absent others. Existing NGO reports often focus on Syrian women’s relationships with spouses, who are said to experience unemployment and their wives’ new occupations as emasculating and a loss of ‘traditional’ pre-war lifestyles ( Lokot, 2018 ). By contrast, we zoom in on relationships between younger and older women. Life in exile and humanitarian programming
labour productivity ( ITU, 2019 ). In the Middle East and North Africa, some predict that digitalisation could raise GDP per capita on average by more than 40 per cent, while long-term unemployment rates could drop and female labour force participation could double to more than 40 per cent in some countries ( Cusolito et al. , 2022 ). While these figures are both promising and impressive, limited research explores how individuals as well as specific
recruited. Already in March 2018 when her colleague was sick, UNRWA did not find a ‘daily-paid’ substitute teacher – instead, her class of thirty-five students had to ‘absorb’ the other teacher’s class, leaving her to teach seventy children in her small classroom. Such changes also mean that young Palestinians who had hoped to work for UNRWA – including prospective teachers, doctors, clerical and facilities staff – will face restricted employment possibilities, leading to increased levels of unemployment, underemployment and related long
The last quarter of the twentieth-century brought forth enormous change to the lives of working-class Britons. This transformation came mainly in the form of widespread industrial closure and the impoverishment associated with permanent unemployment. No British city bore closer witness to this phenomenon than Liverpool. The despair of joblessness and economic deprivation blighted Merseyside to a significantly greater extent than any other major British conurbation. Liverpool had frequently been prone to industrial unrest since 1945, but it was the dawn of Thatcher and the rise of neoliberal economics which made this city a nucleus of resistance against the encroaching tide of monetarism and sweeping de-industrialisation. This critique explores six case studies which illustrate how elements of a highly mobilized and politicized working-class fought against the rapid rise in forced redundancies and increasing industrial closures. Some of their responses included strikes, factory occupations, organising and politicizing the unemployed, effecting radical left-wing municipal politics, and sadly, even surrendering to violent civil unrest. This critique concludes that in the range, intensity and use of innovative tactics deployed during these conflicts, Liverpool stood out from every other British city. Liverpool was distinctive mainly because of its own unique history which involved a long, tortured, familiarity with poverty and mass unemployment.
wealth accumulation or as an avenue for acquiring arms, but alternatively in the way that it became part of a livelihood strategy for many Kosovans. Between 1989 and 1994 the GDP in Kosovo decreased by 50 per cent and unemployment reached 70 per cent in 1995 (Yannis, 2003: 173–174). Joining the KLA or participating in the war economy was, for some, a way of earning a living and providing for their family. However, it is important not to overemphasise profit or even income as a motivation for joining the KLA as political goals remained a strong factor for engaging in
extensive borrowing from foreign actors led to economic crisis in Yugoslavia. The IMF-imposed structural adjustment contributed to a drastic reduction in purchasing power, an increase in unemployment and heightened levels of poverty. At the local level, enterprises found themselves poorly placed in the new liberalised economy. As the focus had always been on trading within the socialist block, they were not in a strong position to compete on the international stage (Estrin, 1994). Domestic trading was also hurt as the deregulation of the trade regime led to local markets