No Way To Make A Living is a sociological space about work, generating discussion and exchange on what work, paid or unpaid, is like in today’s world

This really is no way to make a liv­ing… ‘I am doing this work because I am a Dalit’ This power­ful BBC Radio Today pro­gramme inter­view with a woman lat­rine cleaner in rural Bihar (and accom­pa­ny­ing pics) reminds us just how strong and ‘resi­li­ent’ caste and gender are in determ­in­ing occu­pa­tion in present day India. The…

In 1982, Miriam Glucks­mann pub­lished a book about the exper­i­ence of women work­ing ‘on the line’ at a fact­ory in West Lon­don which pro­duced speedo­met­ers for cars. She had left her higher edu­ca­tion teach­ing job to work in this fact­ory, not with the inten­tion of pro­du­cing an eth­no­graphy, nor with any illu­sions of ‘join­ing the…

I got talk­ing to these reed­cut­ters in North Nor­folk one sunny Janu­ary Sunday. They were sad about the decline of this tra­di­tional industry and the dearth of young people want­ing to work in it, and also com­plained about the high cost of thatched cot­tages in con­trast to their own low wages.