‘Dirty, Dirty Job. Not Good for Your Health’: Working-Class Men and Their Experiences and Relationships with Employment

Socially Haunted? Exploring Young People’s Views on Education and Marginalization

“…Within the United Kingdom, Gordon's epistemology of social haunting has largely been used to explore the lasting effects of deindustrialization in former mining communities. This includes investigation of sites in the north of England such as South Yorkshire and Derbyshire [53][54][55][56], as well as evidence from the South Wales coalfields [57]. These communities, broadly speaking, share many similarities with our earlier description of the North East and deindustrialized communities UK-wide, and can be compared unfavourably against national averages in areas such as health, welfare dependency, educational attainment, and employment rates [58].…”

“…." [56] (p. 51), and "regeneration"-which often arrived too late-means low-pay, low-status, insecure jobs working "flexible" contracts in areas such as warehousing and distribution, retail, customer service, and hospitality [56,57,60].…”

“…For young men coming of age in deindustrialized communities in the United Kingdom, there appears to be a disconnect between the behaviours required for a successful future and the localized acceptable forms of masculinity informed by industrial heritage [64,65]. For many, the traditional working class masculine values of stoicism, risk taking, and toughness [57] associated with heavy industrial work have been channelled into alternative outputs. This appears to be predominantly presenting itself as a portfolio of troubling "laddish" (and somewhat deficit-framed) behaviours such as frequent binge drinking, fighting, drug taking, promiscuity [57,59,60,64,65,105], and the potential for increased involvement in organized criminality [106].…”

“…For many, the traditional working class masculine values of stoicism, risk taking, and toughness [57] associated with heavy industrial work have been channelled into alternative outputs. This appears to be predominantly presenting itself as a portfolio of troubling "laddish" (and somewhat deficit-framed) behaviours such as frequent binge drinking, fighting, drug taking, promiscuity [57,59,60,64,65,105], and the potential for increased involvement in organized criminality [106].…”