Jane Wills
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3673733 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Jane Wills |
| PRENOMES | Jane |
| SOBRENOME | Wills |
| ASSINATURA | WILLS J |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Queen Mary University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5123-0207 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 84 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 852 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 81 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1993 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 16 |
Making sense of community-led place-based research
This perspective introduces a new experiment in community-led place-based research that is taking off in the United Kingdom. The article provides the background and rationale for funding nine independent Community Research Networks for up to £1 million each, for up to 5 years. This, in turn, raises questions about how human geographers might respond to this development and the implications for disciplinary thought and practice. The article explor…
Gaps and opportunities in mental health support for young people
Background Young people aged 16–25 are reporting rising rates of poor mental health, exacerbated by service gaps. Key life transitions such as moving from school to college, or into the workforce can increase vulnerability. Method A mixed-methods evaluation was conducted of a multi-component, mental health intervention in the East of England. The evaluation aimed to: (1) Assess the fidelity, dose, and reach of the intervention; (2) Understand the…
Nature recovery and regional development
This paper provides an overview of the cultural, political and policy changes that are creating new economic opportunities through nature recovery. We introduce research being undertaken with an alliance of English local authorities in rural–peripheral regions to explore these opportunities and their implications for local and regional development paths. The paper highlights the questions driving the project and introduces the economic sectors in…
The extraordinary task of crafting a more ‘ordinary’ geography
This commentary responds to the provocations in Shawn Bodden's paper, ‘Working through our differences', in which he draws on the work of the late Clive Barnett and Ordinary Language Philosophy to advocate for a more ‘ordinary’ orientation to geographical inquiry. In the interests of generating wider debate, I push Bodden to go a step further and fully embrace the extraordinary task he is asking us to take on. The consequences of his argument imp…
Public health practitioners as policy advocates
Effecting policy change is a key strategy in tackling wider determinants of health. In England, public health sits within Local Authorities (LAs) and responsibility for ensuring health is considered across directorates increasingly falls to public health practitioners. While international professional standards expect competence in understanding policy processes, the advocacy role has been under-explored. This paper explores the professional skil…
Settings for the development of health literacy
Advances in conceptualizing settings in health promotion include understanding settings as complex and interlinked systems with a core commitment to health and related outcomes such as health literacy. Traditional settings for the development of health literacy include health care environments and schools. There is a need to identify and conceptualize non-traditional and emerging settings of twenty-first-century everyday life. The aim of this con…
Localising and democratising goal-based governance for sustainability
Accelerating social and environmental change raises pressing questions about how existing institutions can be reformed to mount a more effective response. In this context, goal-based governance has been widely adopted in order to mobilise existing bodies to agree shared goals and develop common purpose. Increasingly employed in sustainability governance at the international scale, goal-based governance concerns setting pan-organisational goals an…
Bridging the gaps between demos and kratos
This article explores the gap between people and rule (demos and kratos) in democratic societies by exploring the history and practice of broad-based community organising, as applied by London Citizens, United Kingdom (UK). The paper outlines the origins of this model of politics and how it has been translated from the United States to London and the UK. The paper highlights the power of mobilising the demos to put pressure on the decision-making…
Differences in digital health literacy and future anxiety between health care and other university students in England during the Covid-19 pandemic
Although digital health literacy is well developed in university students, a significant proportion of students still face difficulties with evaluating online information which may frustrate public health efforts. This could be addressed by ensuring health students' curriculum in particular encompasses digital health literacy
Downscaling doughnut economics for sustainability governance
The concept of ‘doughnut economics’ is attracting growing attention from policy-makers and has the potential to unify stakeholders around a holistic vision of sustainable development. The ‘safe and just’ space within the doughnut is framed at a global scale, based on human needs that represent a foundation for social wellbeing, and planetary boundaries reflecting biophysical limits. However, the geographical division of political power between an…
Integrating sociotechnical and spatial imaginaries in researching energy futures
How can academic research on UK agri-environment schemes pivot to meet the addition of climate mitigation aims
Setting the agenda for social science research on the human microbiome
The human microbiome is an important emergent area of cross, multi and transdisciplinary study. The complexity of this topic leads to conflicting narratives and regulatory challenges. It raises questions about the benefits of its commercialisation and drives debates about alternative models for engaging with its publics, patients and other potential beneficiaries. The social sciences and the humanities have begun to explore the microbiome as an o…
Spatial Histories of Radical Geography
This book is undoubtedly a milestone in the ongoing process of writing the histories of the great period that saw the rising of critical and radical approaches in geography from the 1960s and 1970s onward. Although these histories are characterized by a plurality of methodological approaches (biographical, transnational, place-based, and spatial-sensitive), there is increasing evidence that this rising was international, albeit one of its most fa…
The geo‐constitution and responses to austerity
A nation's geo‐constitution – its spatially uneven political institutions – plays a critical role in mediating change. This paper explores this in relation to local government responses to austerity. The paper presents original research collected in Cornwall, United Kingdom, to highlight the scale and impact of asset transfers to town and parish councils. This degree of institutional switching was possible because of a willingness to use legacy c…
Reading Clive Barnett's The Priority of Injustice
The geo-constitution
This paper draws on existing work in the discipline of human geography and cognate fields in order to develop the concept of the ‘geo-constitution’. This concept aims to: (1) highlight the importance of intersections between geography and political institutions in the constitution of government; (2) consider the path-dependent development of political institutions and their impact on statecraft and citizenship; (3) explore the implications of thi…
Migrant Division of Labor
The migrant division of labor refers to the way in which the labor market can be differentiated by the immigration status of workers, complicating segmentation patterns that reflect long‐established divisions on the basis of gender and ethnicity. National rules determining the immigration status of workers can affect their access to work, to welfare and to political protection. In combination with wider labor market conditions, such laws affect t…
Living Wage
A living wage is the minimum hourly wage required to allow a worker to support her/himself and her/his dependents. It should cover the cost of food, housing, and basic needs. It is based on securing a basic standard of living in a particular geographical area.
Troubled, Troubling or in Trouble
The Troubled Families (TF) programme is a national initiative launched in 2011 that aims to identify and work with families defined as ‘troubled’. An in-depth case study was undertaken using biographical data from eight ‘troubled families’ in one London borough. Intensive accounts of their lives were collected and analysed to illustrate the historical events, life experiences, and formal and informal support that may have led to their identificat…
The geography of the political party
This paper highlights the geographical contributions made to academic debate about democracy, representation and the role of the political party. It argues that while geographers have made important arguments in relation to the structure and operation of representative democracy, there is scope for paying greater attention to the internal spatial dynamics of the political party. A successful political party requires a balance between the national…
Dissident Geographies
Dissident Geographies is an accessible and lively exploration of radical perspectives in human geography. The perspectives examined in the book reveal and resist certain power relations that have constituted geographical knowledge. The book has two main aims. First, rather than reify 'the' geographical tradition, Dissident Geographies introduces a number of geographical traditions that challenge and destabilize what counts as geographical knowled…
Locating Localism
Developing ‘process pragmatism’ to underpin engaged research in human geography
This paper explores the contribution that pragmatist philosophy can make to the way that we do research and teaching in human geography. It provides a historical overview of the key ideas in the tradition, their influence on the Chicago School of Sociology and community organizing, and the implications of this work for epistemological practice. The paper then looks at the variety of ways in which human geographers are using research as a means to…
Locating Localism
Locating localism explores the development of localism as a new mode of statecraft and its implications for the practice of citizenship in England. The book takes the long view of this new policy development, positioning it in relation to the political geo-history of the British state. It highlights the challenges of the state devolving itself and the importance of citizens having the incentives and institutions needed to act. Drawing on original…
Keeping London working
This paper explores the emergence of a new ‘migrant division of labour’ in London. In contrast to a vision of ‘professionalization’, it shows that London's labour market has been characterized by processes of occupational polarization and that a disproportionate number of London's low‐paid jobs are now filled by foreign‐born workers. Drawing on original survey data, the paper explores the pay and conditions of London's low‐paid migrant workers an…
Community unionism and trade union renewal in the UK
This paper explores the theory and practice of community unionism. It is now widely argued that if trade unions are to reach employees in small workplaces, those on part‐time or temporary contracts, and women, black and ethnic minority workers, they need to sustain alliances beyond the walls of the workplace. Increasing the scale of political mobilization in this way can help secure trade union organization amongst new groups of workers while giv…
Men on the move
The impact of migration on gender identities, norms and conventions has been predominantly understood from the perspective of female migrants. Far less attention has been paid to the potential that migration entails for the negotiation and reconstruction of male identities. Drawing on sixty-seven in-depth interviews with male migrants employed in low-paid work in London, this paper explores the reworking of male identities at different stages of …
London's Migrant Division of Labour
This article is located in the maelstrom of debate about immigration and employment in the contemporary economy. The article presents original analysis of data from the Labour Force Survey and a workplace case-study in the cleaning sector to highlight growing employer dependence on a very diverse pool of foreign-born labour. The article explains such dependency by drawing on interview material collected from employers, employers' associations, co…
Building reciprocal community unionism in the UK
British trade union renewal has focused on the twin strategies of organising and partnership. Drawing on experience from North America, and fledgling developments in Britain, this paper argues that reciprocal community unionism could provide another weapon in the union movement's armoury for reversing decline. The paper provides a brief historical overview of the intersection between unions and community in Britain before addressing reciprocal co…
Faith in Politics
Civil society is often seen as providing a social foundation from which to combat injustices perpetuated by the state and the corporate sector. Faith institutions are an integral and often overlooked component of this abstract civil society. In this paper, it is argued that faith has an important role to play in offering answers to the challenges posed by increasing inequalities and urban injustice. The major faith traditions share a commitment t…
Taking on the CosmoCorps? Experiments in Transnational Labor Organization
This paper revisits the argument that globalization necessarily undermines trade union organization. In addition to heightened competition for investment and the threat of social dumping, the internationalization of capital can also bring workers into closer contact with each other. Working class nationalism and internationalism are both possible outcomes of economic globalization. By exploring the history of labor internationalism and the curren…
Developing ‘process pragmatism’ to underpin engaged research in human geography
This paper explores the contribution that pragmatist philosophy can make to the way that we do research and teaching in human geography. It provides a historical overview of the key ideas in the tradition, their influence on the Chicago School of Sociology and community organizing, and the implications of this work for epistemological practice. The paper then looks at the variety of ways in which human geographers are using research as a means to…
The Geography of Union Organising in Low‐Paid Service Industries in the UK
This paper highlights the importance of organising workers in the low‐paid services sector if British trade unions are to secure themselves for the future. After outlining the scale of the challenge and the new efforts being made to promote organising by unions, the paper looks at the hotel industry in more depth. A case study of a union campaign to win union recognition at the Dorchester Hotel in London is used to highlight the limitations of wo…
Subcontracted Employment and its Challenge to Labor
This article argues that subcontracted employment is becoming paradigmatic. This form of employment has stark consequences for traditional models of trade union organization that focus on collective bargaining with the employer. The article highlights the need for subcontracted workers to put pressure on the “real employer” at the top of any contracting chain. Drawing on the lessons from community-union organizing efforts and, particularly, livin…
Integrating sociotechnical and spatial imaginaries in researching energy futures
Laboring for Love? A Comment on Academics and Their Hours of Work
Evidence would suggest that for those in work, the rigors of the contemporary labor market require them to work longer and harder than was previously the case. While new workplace cultures of obsessive over‐work have been documented amongst professionals in the private sector, the parallels have rarely been drawn with academic work. This paper uses original research material collated by students at Southampton University to discuss the changing n…
Multicultural Living
Since the 1990s migrants from smaller, legally differentiated and non-citizen immigrant groups have formed the main flows of migration to the UK and yet they have been overlooked in academic and public debates and agendas. While much academic research has been devoted to racism, the new forms of racism which accompany the `new migration' have also received little attention. This article, therefore, demonstrates the continuing importance and chang…
The geo-constitution
This paper draws on existing work in the discipline of human geography and cognate fields in order to develop the concept of the ‘geo-constitution’. This concept aims to: (1) highlight the importance of intersections between geography and political institutions in the constitution of government; (2) consider the path-dependent development of political institutions and their impact on statecraft and citizenship; (3) explore the implications of thi…
The new development finance or exploiting migrant labour
This paper challenges the recent hailing of migrant remittances as a panacea for development finance in countries of the global South. It argues that such a viewpoint fails to recognise the costs to migrant workers of remitting. Many of these workers reside in the industrialised countries of the global North. Based on an empirical investigation of low-paid migrant workers in London, this paper highlights the nature of remittance sending, the ofte…
The Geography of Trade Union Decline
Since the late 1970s, in many nations trade union membership has fallen sharply and the power of trade unions has weakened considerably. The decline in unionization has been particularly abrupt in Britain. Whether considered as a crisis or as a transition of organized labour, the unions have been in retreat. Although the broad features and dimensions of this decline have received attention, relatively little is known about its geography, about ho…
Making Class Politics Possible
This article tells the story of community and union-led efforts to re-regulate the contract cleaning sector and to organize cleaners at Canary Wharf and in the City of London. It provides a historical overview of the campaign and highlights its innovative responses to subcontracted employment in the city today. The article starts by outlining anti-essentialist approaches to the politics of class before using the campaign to flesh out what such po…
Understanding critical health literacy
BACKGROUND: Interest in and debates around health literacy have grown over the last two decades and key to the discussions has been the distinction made between basic functional health literacy, communicative/interactive health literacy and critical health literacy. Of these, critical health literacy is the least well developed and differing interpretations of its constituents and relevance exist. The aim of this study is to rigorously analyse th…
A Migrant Ethic of Care? Negotiating Care and Caring among Migrant Workers in London's Low-Pay Economy
A care deficit is clearly evident in global cities such as London and is attributable to an ageing population, the increased employment of native-born women, prevalent gender ideologies that continue to exempt men from much reproductive work, as well as the failure of the state to provide viable alternatives. However, while it is now acknowledged that migrant women, and to a lesser extent, migrant men, step in to provide care in cities such as Lo…
Mapping Class and its Political Possibilities
The resurgence of interest in class that has been associated with the US-based working class studies agenda is very exciting. Scholars are finding new ways to explore the significance of class, and they are doing it as part of various political projects to celebrate working class lives and organisation (Russo and Linkon 2005). It is significant that these scholar-activists are finding ways to avoid hostilities between the “old ” left and post-str…
New geographies of trade unionism
The geography of community and political organisation in London today
Geographies of Trade Unionism
In the context of national trade union decline, this paper explores the geography of trade union organization through case study research at the Shredded Wheat Factory in Welwyn Garden City (Herfordshire, UK). This example highlights the geographical constitution of trade union traditions, focusing upon the ways in which collective practices and ideas are forged in particular places but also how trade union traditions can be translated across spa…
Women Working Worldwide
In this article we trace the history of a new form of labour internationalism that emerged in support of women workers' organizations, in particular in the garment industry, from the 1980s. We tell the story of the emergence of Women Working Worldwide (WWW), a small UK-based NGO that provides solidarity and support for a network of women workers' organizations in the commodity producing zones of the global South. WWW grew along with other organiz…
Space, Place and the New Labour Internationalisms
The Geography of Trade Union Decline
Since the late 1970s, in many nations trade union membership has fallen sharply and the power of trade unions has weakened considerably. The decline in unionization has been particularly abrupt in Britain. Whether considered as a crisis or as a transition of organized labour, the unions have been in retreat. Although the broad features and dimensions of this decline have received attention, relatively little is known about its geography, about ho…
Unions and the Politics of Deindustrialization
Labouring Differences
Ron Martin, Peter Sunley, Jane Wills, Labouring Differences: Method, Measurement and Purpose in Geographical Research on Trade Unions, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1994), pp. 102-110
The Decentralization of Industrial Relations? New Institutional Spaces and the Role of Local Context in British Engineering
Laboring for Love? A Comment on Academics and Their Hours of Work
Evidence would suggest that for those in work, the rigors of the contemporary labor market require them to work longer and harder than was previously the case. While new workplace cultures of obsessive over‐work have been documented amongst professionals in the private sector, the parallels have rarely been drawn with academic work. This paper uses original research material collated by students at Southampton University to discuss the changing n…
Geographies of Trade Unionism
In the context of national trade union decline, this paper explores the geography of trade union organization through case study research at the Shredded Wheat Factory in Welwyn Garden City (Herfordshire, UK). This example highlights the geographical constitution of trade union traditions, focusing upon the ways in which collective practices and ideas are forged in particular places but also how trade union traditions can be translated across spa…
Uneven Reserves
WILLS J. (1996) Uneven reserves: geographies of banking trade unionism, Reg. Studies 30, 359–372. This paper explores the geography of trade union organization in the retail banking sector. Spatial variations in union membership, and the reasons for these differences, are excavated using empirical material collected in two high street banks in Welwyn Garden City (Hertfordshire) and Warrington (Cheshire) during 1993. Despite the fact that workers …
An atlas of industrial protest in Britain 1750-1990
A Stake in Place? The Geography of Employee Ownership and its Implications for a Stakeholding Society
In recent years employee ownership has become a means by which some workers facing privatization, closure or takeover have attempted to defend their jobs and communities. Proponents of a ‘stakeholding’ society have advocated the widening of share ownership as a means of democratizing the economy, building partnerships and achieving consensus at work. But is employee ownership able to sustain local investment and industrial partnership? Through a …
Taking on the CosmoCorps? Experiments in Transnational Labor Organization
This paper revisits the argument that globalization necessarily undermines trade union organization. In addition to heightened competition for investment and the threat of social dumping, the internationalization of capital can also bring workers into closer contact with each other. Working class nationalism and internationalism are both possible outcomes of economic globalization. By exploring the history of labor internationalism and the curren…
Union Retreat and the Regions
The Discreet Charm of a New Labour Government
Political economy I
Political economy I
Filling the Vacuum in New Management Practice? Lessons from US Employee-Owned Firms
In this paper we explore the way in which Anglo-American capitalism is evolving to meet the competitive challenges of a global economy. A wide range of scholars, policymakers, and business leaders now argue that the post-Fordist economy requires greater levels of employee involvement, participation, and empowerment, and a new set of management practices have been developed to secure this new culture of work. In this paper we explore these develop…
Political economy II
Having spent much of the last two years researching European works councils and the prospects for labour internationalism in transnational firms, this report reflects my obsession with the horrors of the contemporary global political-economic order. I’ve deliberately tried to raise some big questions to try to prod readers into giving me answers. The report starts by looking at the project to create a neoliberal global economy. I then go on to co…
Geography and its Discontents
The Workplace at the Millennium
Uneven Geographies of Capital and Labour
This contribution explores the ways in which trade unions have sought to organise workers in transnational corporations (TNCs) before looking at the pitfalls and possibilities of European Works Councils in more detail. The EWC directive covers an estimated 1400 companies across Europe, employing at least 15 million workers, and there are now more than 500 EWCs in existence. These new institutions are designed to allow employee representatives fro…
Space, Place and the New Labour Internationalisms
Community unionism and trade union renewal in the UK
This paper explores the theory and practice of community unionism. It is now widely argued that if trade unions are to reach employees in small workplaces, those on part‐time or temporary contracts, and women, black and ethnic minority workers, they need to sustain alliances beyond the walls of the workplace. Increasing the scale of political mobilization in this way can help secure trade union organization amongst new groups of workers while giv…
Bargaining for the space to organize in the global economy
At the present conjuncture there are real opportunities for international trade unions to forge coalitions with other social movements, to foster transnational connections between workers, consumers and intermediaries, and to engage directly with global employers in order to bargain for workers. As companies declare their support for ethical practice in production and trade, a number of global union federations have seized the opportunity to sign…
Political economy III
Place, Space, and the New Labour Internationalisms
Place, Space and the New Labour Internationalisms. Introduction: Place, Space and the New Labour Internationalisms: Beyond the Fragments? Peter Waterman and Jane Wills. 1. New Developments in Trade Union Internationalism:. Trade Union Internationalism in the Age of Seattle: Peter Waterman. Southern Unionism and the New Labour Internationalism: Rob Lambert and Eddie Webster. Rethinking the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and its I…
Progress or Retreat? Antipode and the Radical Geographical Project
Political science (55 obras) · Sociology (51 obras) · Economics (38 obras) · Politics (34 obras) · Law (33 obras) · Labor Movements and Unions (24 obras) · Geography (22 obras) · Law (21 obras) · Political economy (18 obras) · Business (17 obras)