The Precarity of Young People’s Housing Experiences in a Rural Context

Young people’s housing, economic and labour market circumstances have become increasingly insecure due to the combined effects of the 2007/2008 economic crisis, neoliberal welfare reforms, rising costs of higher education and the shortage of affordable housing. Discussions of young peoples’ experiences in these domains have largely neglected their spatial variability but evidence suggests that young people living in rural parts of the UK have distinctive experiences of housing, which are closely connected to labour markets and educational opportunities. By drawing on qualitative data from young people and housing professionals, this article explores some of these rural distinctions and frames them within theoretical debates about the ‘precariat’. It argues for a more theoretically informed and geographically nuanced understanding of contemporary housing issues as rural youth potentially face greater precarity than their urban peers.     

Trends in real wages in Denmark since the Late Middle Ages

This article constructs long-span time series indices on wages in Denmark and explores the growth in living standards in the pre-industrial era. There were several persistent upward and downward trends in real annual earnings from 1500 to 1820, but no clear upward long-term trend. This finding seems hard to reconcile with Maddison's figure for the average annual growth in real GDP per capita in Denmark (0.17%) over the same period. This is the case, even if the growth rate in pre-industrial annual earnings is underestimated by 0.05%–0.06% per annum due to an increased number of working days.     

Disabilities,gender and employment: social exclusion,employment equity and Canadian banking1

People with disabilities, especially women, suffer from appallingly high rates of poverty, and paid work is frequently cited as a primary route out of poverty. I draw on feminist analyses of work and disability studies to reflect on the Canadian federal government's Employment Equity Act. I use the example of the ‘Big Six’ banks to investigate the numerical representation and occupational distribution of women and men with disabilities compared to their counterparts without disabilities. However, social justice in the workplace is at least as much about the quality of social relationships as it is about statistical effects. Reaching workplace equity also involves the creation of a workplace climate where people with disabilities experience supportive and responsive supervision, along with a sense of being respected and valued. I assess the banks’ progress towards identifying and eliminating discriminatory disabling barriers. I close with a discussion of workplace climate and locate the Act in the context of a broader network of change that includes challenging ableism.