Long-term ill health and the social embeddedness of work: a study in a post-industrial, multi-ethnic locality in the UK

Against the background of an increasingly individualising welfare-to-work regime,sociological studies of incapacity and health-related worklessness have called for an appreciation of the role of history and context in patterning individualexperience. This article responds to that call by exploring the work experiences of long-term sick people in East London, a post-industrial, multi-ethnic locality. It demonstrates how the individual experiences of long-term sickness and work are embedded in social relations of class, generation, ethnicity and gender, which shape people’s formal and informal routes to work protection, work-seeking practices and responses to worklessness. We argue that this social embeddedness requires greater attention in welfare-to-work policy.