Linda McDowell is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oxford. She is a Fellow of St John's College, where she is the Director of the Research Centre, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Widely published and well-known as a feminist ethnographer of labour and employment, her books include Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City (Blackwell, 1997), Gender, Identity and Place (1999), Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working-Class Youth (Blackwell, 2003), Hard Labour (2005) and Working Bodies: Interactive Service Employment and Workplace Identities (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

List of Figures and Tables viii
Series Editors' Preface x
Preface: Leaving Home and Looking for Work xi
Part One Migration and Mobilities 1
1 Leaving Home: Migration and Working Lives 3
2 Gendering Labour Geographies and Histories 19
3 The Transformation of Britain 51
Part Two Out to Work: Embodied Genealogies 69
4 Post-war Reconstruction, 1945-1951 71
5 Coming Home: The Heart of Empire, 1948-1968 95
6 Years of Struggle, 1968-1979 128
7 Privilege and Inequality, 1979-1997 157
8 Back to the Future: Diversity and Precarious Labour, 1997-2007 184
9 Full Circle, 1945-2007 213
References 232
Appendix: Post-war Legislation 253
Index 263

Full of unique and compelling insights into the working lives of migrant women in the UK, this book draws on more than two decades of in-depth research to explore the changing nature of women's employment in post-war Britain.
* A first-rate example of theoretically located empirical analysis of labour market change in contemporary Britain
* Includes compelling case studies that combine historical documentation of social change with fascinating first-hand accounts of women's working lives over decades
* Integrates information gleaned from more than two decades of in-depth research
* Revealing comparative analysis of the similarities and differences in the lives of immigrant working women in post-war Britain
* Features real-life accounts of women's under-reported experiences of migration