Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

Between May 1978 and December 1983 the sociologist Ray Pahl conducted seven extensive interviews with a couple from Sheppey that he called 'Linda' and 'Jim'. The interviews evolved into an intensive, profoundly human story of how a family used to 'getting by' (though never 'affluent') coped with the hardships and indignities of long-term reliance on welfare benefits. Perhaps inevitably, fascinating aspects of Linda and Jim's testimony were left unused in Divisions of Labour, primarily because they were marginal to Pahl's principal areas of interest. These edited extracts from the interview transcripts focus on questions of identity and the emotional experience of unemployment. Changing the lens through which we study Linda and Jim does not invalidate Pahl's earlier arguments, but it can offer different insights into what it meant to be unemployed in Thatcher's Britain.

Main Topics:

Household work strategies; household; family life; community life; labour and employment; unemployment; casual employment; employment opportunities; neighbours; political behaviour; political allegiance; kinship; income.

Purposive selection/case studies

Face-to-face interview