David Etherington

Staffordshire University | SU · Business School

Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic and ‘cost of living’ crisis revealed and intensified the United Kingdom’s (UK) socio-spatial inequalities, these crises did not emerge into a vacuum. Long-term trends of deindustrialisation and austerity have meant many places particularly the former industrial areas across the North and Midlands have been ‘left behind’...

Book Chapter on the Coalition government welfare to work policy

This paper argues that city-region building debates and relatedly “post-political” literatures are missing critical perspectives on the state, particularly the state’s continued existence as a social relation and an arena for politics, its role in the regulation of uneven development and the conflicts and struggles that arise from this. The paper b...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the resilience of a national-level initiative (Improving Working Lives (IWL)) in the face of local-level initiative (Turnaround) in an NHS hospital and compare to Bach and Kessler’s (2012) model of public service employment relations. Design/methodology/approach – Case study research consisting of...

Within the context of spatial rebalancing and a Northern (metro-region) Powerhouse, this article explores the implementation of the devolution of employment and skills within the Sheffield city region. We make both an original empirical and analytical contribution by suggesting that notions of governance and metagovernance failure are important for...

This chapter seeks to characterise the welfare and active labour market policies of the coalition government between 2010 and 2015. It examines the main reforms to the tax and benefit systems, including clear moves towards ‘workfare’. It argues that the coalition’s welfare to work agenda was to a large extent dominated by a traditional Conservative...

Introduction From the mid-1980s onwards, the UK social security system has become increasingly residual in nature, with the language of contracts pervading most areas of welfare, as evidenced by the creation of Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) in 1995/96. By the mid-1990s, a crossparty consensus had emerged concerning the need to move away from a passiv...

This book examines the social policies of the coalition government from 2010 to 2015, and outlines the incoming Conservative government’s approach during its first 100 days in office. Drawing on contributions on cross-cutting themes such as public expenditure and the governance of social policy, and on key service areas, including education, health...

The aim of this chapter is to explore in the case of Denmark the influence of social dialogue on activation for disabled people, reflecting ongoing tensions in the context of recession. Specifically, the chapter (i) outlines the reforms of the 2000s, involving a more work first strategy for disabled people; (ii) analyses the devolution and municipa...

Introduction The number of people claiming sickness benefits has risen considerably across countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and employment rates for those with a disability average around half of those without (OECD, 2009). In response to the increasing numbers of older workers and those with long-term...

This book focuses on policies, primarily in the United Kingdom, which are designed to facilitate the participation of disabled people in wage work. The book takes a critical approach to these policies by examining three main issues. First, the way in which eligibility rules and assessment procedures increasingly mean disabled people have responsibi...

In industrialized countries women have increasingly become a target group for active labour market policies, or ‘activation’. However, to date, the burgeoning literature on activation has tended to overlook its link with the highly gendered nature of welfare. This article presents the first comparative analysis of activation approaches for partnere...

A strong VET system is increasingly seen as essential to overcoming the current economic crisis in Europe. VET is seen as a powerful tool to assist in balancing labour market inefficiencies, increasing youth employment possibilities, and reducing skills mismatch. Its inherent flexibility and closeness to the labour market place VET in a good p...

The increasing number of recipients of disability and long-term sickness benefits has resulted in the introduction of specific employability programmes in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. In the UK Pathways to Work involved enabling and support measures for benefit recipients with long-term health conditions....

Spatial concentrations of worklessness remained a key characteristic of labour markets in advanced industrial economies, even during the period of decline in aggregate levels of unemployment and economic inactivity evident from the late 1990s to the economic downturn in 2008. The failure of certain localities to benefit from wider improvements in r...

Etherington D. and Jones M. City-regions: new geographies of uneven development and inequality, Regional Studies. Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning literature on the 'new regionalism'. Protagonists have made persuasive arguments about regions as successful models of economic and social development. This paper argues that the championing of '...

Skills are currently riding high on the political agenda and major changes are underway with respect to regulation and governance. We explore developments taking place in the Sheffield city-region, particularly the 'skills strategy for Sheffield' and its governance. We suggest that city-regions reinforce, and have the potential to increase, rather...

The dissolution of the old mechanisms of state welfare has not yet led to the generation of a new welfare settlement, although the rise of neoliberalism and of what Jessop has called the Schumpeterian Competition State have highlighted some key directions of change. The importance of geographical inequality and unevenness to the process of reshapin...

This paper assesses recent policies and initiatives to promote neighbourhood renewal in the context of housing market change in two different policy environments -- those of Denmark and England. The authors suggest that surface similarities in the recent urban policy discourses of the two countries tend to conceal deeper differences in the capacity...

This paper is positioned within theoretical perspectives that focus on welfare states as systems of power and negotiation between key social forces acting in and through the state apparatus. Despite an emerging consensus that UK welfare-state restructuring is deeply problematic, there appears to be reluctance, within the debate, to discuss viable a...

English This article builds on the emerging body of work concerned with local state restructuring under New Labour. Set within the context of labour market and welfare state restructuring, we suggest that there is an emerging consensus for a more robust and proactive involvement by local government. The article argues that initiatives for reactivat...

The reform of the British welfare state through the Labour Party's welfare-to-work initiative is beginning to generate considerable debate. Research is revealing that, amongst other things, supply-side interventions are not sufficient on their own to build skilled, dynamic, and socially inclusive economies. Although there is an emerging consensus t...

This chapter explores the strategies deployed by women and social movements in the pursuit of gender equality. The chapter focuses on welfare and workfare, comparing the UK and Denmark.

English The Labour government’s ‘Welfare to Work’ strategy has been met with criticism on two grounds; the first relates to its free market orientation which is unlikely to reduce labour market inequalities. The second is its capacity to deliver given a stringent macro monetary policy and tight public expenditure constraints which will slow down ec...

During the 1980s, Denmark implemented an experimental programme, the Free Local Government Initiative (FLGI) as part of a wider strategy of decentralization, promoting local government autonomy. This article critically assesses the FLGI experiment and outlines its relevance for the UK.

In this continuing discussion on the role of industrial improvement areas the author extends the arguments to suggest how IIAs could be a progressive planning tool linking economic, property and land-use strategies.