Book review: Poverty and insecurity: life in low-pay, no payBritain

How do people get by in times and in places where opportunities for standard employment have drastically reduced? This book examines the relationship between social exclusion, poverty and the labour market. It seeks to challenge long-standing and dominant myths about ‘the workless’ and ‘the poor’, by exploring close-up the lived realities of life in low-pay, no-pay Britain. Based on unique qualitative, life-history research with a ‘hard-to-reach group’ of younger and older people, men and women, the book shows how poverty and insecurity have now become the defining features of working life for many. An illuminating read, finds Jacob Lesniewski.