Abstract
In Britain contention over unemployment has come to an end. In the last decade, the unemployed have stopped to voice their claims at the national level, and have resorted to occasional instances of protest only as the result of local industrial disputes (Cinalli and Statham 2005). This chapter aims first of all to assess how this long process of pacification has come about. Contention over unemployment has varied substantially across time, both in terms of intensity and forms, with the unemployed alternating waves of mobilization with periods of acquiescence. This chapter also asks whether current pacification might be reversed in the future. The main question is whether New Labour has achieved a durable settlement that can reintegrate the interest of the unemployed in the political space while keeping the unemployed themselves far from street protest. Could the unemployed return to collective action owing to an increasing rate of unemployment? In fact, unemployment may also be prioritized as a salient issue regardless of real rates of unemployment (Baxandall 2001; Giugni and Berclaz 2003; see also chapter nine in this volume), while invisible processes of contentious politics may be in act beyond the curtains of the pacified field (Melucci 1984 and 1989).1
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© 2012 Didier Chabanet and Jean Faniel
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Chabanet, D., Faniel, J. (2012). Contention over Unemployment in Britain: Unemployment Politics versus the Politics of the Unemployed. In: Chabanet, D., Faniel, J. (eds) The Mobilization of the Unemployed in Europe. Europe in Transition: The NYU European Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137011862_8
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