Informal Working, Survival Strategies and the Idea of an ‘Underclass’

Abstract

Teesside — famous world-wide in the 1950s for its success in steel and chemical production — has in the 1980s and 1990s become notorious for its persistently high levels of unemployment and the socio-cultural problems which accompany mass joblessness. The locality is now probably better known as the ‘Car Crime Capital of Europe’ than for its proud industrial heritage. The securities of full employment just thirty years ago have given way to the uncertainties of massive economic collapse and the social changes have been so deep and farreaching that commentators such as Charles Murray now single out the place as home of what he calls the ‘New Rabble’ underclass (1994).