Workers' Dilemmas: Recruitment, Reliability and Repeated Exchange: An Analysis of Urban Social Networks and Labour Circulation

Originally published in 1996, Workers’ Dilemmas analyses the management skills of those with least resources, the women of the urban poor, and finds that there is an abundance of evidence on the high levels of managerial competence within this group. It is information which has largely been hidden from history. This study of poor women’s involvement in the world of work corrects this missing record.

For over a century (1850–1960s), women and children travelled from their urban homes in the E...