Social Tenants, Attachment to Place and Work in the Post-industrial Labour Market: Underlining the Limits of Housing-based Explanations of Labour Immobility?

Policy makers have increasingly highlighted the role of social housing in restricting the job-related mobility of tenants. This paper, drawing upon in-depth interviews with residents of the Manor estate in Sheffield, discusses the strength of housing-based explanations of worklessness. It finds that residents have responded to economic transformation by drawing on locally concentrated social networks and are unwilling to sever these close ties in order to access jobs that are frequently experienced as exploitative and demeaning. Consequently, their inertia can be viewed as a rational response to the low paid, chronically insecure jobs available in the post-industrial labour market. The author concludes that the significance of housing-based explanations of labour immobility is that they are simultaneously congruent with welfare reform that uses a compulsive strategy to enforce work habits and provide ammunition for those antagonistic to the principle of social housing.