Coping with and resisting everyday inequalities in the UK
The state is back. Since we moved to this little town in Southern Italy, it has become blatantly apparent that the old brutality of the state is still very much present, more than I, and academics in my field, realised. There are no reported Covid-19 cases here. Nor in the neighbouring towns. But police and …
Continue reading "The state is back: Chronicles from the Italian lockdown (Part 1)"
“Stay at home”, the government tells us. The message is everywhere: Spotify adverts, and messages on people’s homes, businesses’ windows, and Facebook walls. Every time I read it or hear it, there is a shooting of fear down to my stomach. As Carter, Green, and Speed point out, it is a difficult, and somewhat ironic, …
Continue reading "Home is where the front door is: Corona homemaking in the UK"
Good News. Disruptiveinequalities.com is back - we are relaunching our blog. Given our own mobility and involvement with other national contexts our future accounts will also involve stories of banal inequalities and everyday resistances that we find in other parts of the world. Whilst our ethnographic explorations began in London, we are excited about taking …
This month we have a contribution from educator and thinker, Arnaldo. He currently teaches in London where he also researches and writes about the London Latinx community. It is my first time in a London police station. My nerves are crackling like water on hot grease, however, on the surface I am stoic. I have the impression …
“This wedding is going to change the world” The BBC reporter in Los Angeles was telling us of the joy and amazement everyone there was feeling after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding ceremony. I was watching “The Royal Wedding” in a pub in Brighton, with half-ironic union jack bunting over the bar, and I’d …
Continue reading "For richer for poorer: An insincere promise from the royals"
This is a guest contribution from Kathleen Painter who is currently a MA student at UCL Institute of Education. Settling into my seat in the corner of this conference room in one of the world’s most prestigious universities, I feel the room’s densely historical ambience with its high ceilings, weighty dark wood conference table, and …
Continue reading "The white-guy portraits on the wall: universities are defined by social exclusion"
Don’t call them unemployed, please. The charity’s management invited me to East London to talk about their employability programmes. Don’t call them unemployed, repeats one of the managers. I have only recently taken over my position as a lecturer in London, having previously lived and worked elsewhere in Europe. I am not accustomed with the …
Continue reading "Making Happy Job Seekers – Precarity and Emotional Resilience"
Our third guest contribution is from Will Nyerere Plastow, a scriptwriter and filmmaker, currently working at the BBC. I stepped out of the ring my brain aching and my mouth tasting of blood. For the final round I'd had tunnel vision, trying to beat down my rapidly tiring opponent. But I hadn't done enough. I …
This is a guest contribution from Emma Brooks who is currently a PhD student at UCL Institute of Education researching antenatal care in London. Piotr appeared to have it all: he worked full-time as a builder and was happily married with two young children. At the beginning of each pre-entry ESOL class he would …
Continue reading "A Tale of Two Cities: health inequalities in 21st century London"
In my first week of my PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine I made a terrible mistake. We were all settling in working on our literature reviews and I’d gone out into the courtyard for a cigarette. Suddenly an unidentified voice from a few stories above started shouting down at me: …
Continue reading "Being a Dirty Smoker: How public health academia villainises the poor"
