The New Deal for Young People, introduced in April 1998, has been a flagship of the Labour Government. This book is the first comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the New Deal and examines how far the programme has succeeded in responding to the diversity of conditions in local labour markets across the UK.

The book argues that profound differences in local labour market conditions have exerted a telling influence on the New Deal’s achievements. It proposes that contemporary labour market policy should not only be based on theories and models of the national economy and of individual behaviour, but that policy design also needs to recognise the importance of the local and regional labour market contexts which shape its viability and outcomes. By situating policy in this way, the book not only examines how workfare has been put in place in the UK, but also puts place into workfare.

Putting Workfare in Placeis a diligently researched and empirically rich account of the significant changes to Britain’s work-welfare regime. Policymakers need to be aware of how institutional spaces and labour market conditions interact to produce local knowledges and Sunley, Martin and Nativel provide us with compelling evidence to question national assumptions of socio-economic development.

Professor Martin Jones, Director of the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth

This book lays out a thoughtful assessment of the UK's New Deal program and the extent to which its underlying theory and ideology adequately reflect the geographies of unemployment. The authors do a masterful job, and policymakers, academics, policy advisers, and politicians will find this book both compelling and considered.

Amy Glasmeier, E Willard Miller Professor of Economic Geography, The Pennsylvania State University

This book is the first comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the New Deal and examines how far the programme has succeeded in responding to the diversity of conditions in local labour markets across the UK.

This book is the first comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the New Deal and examines how far the programme has succeeded in responding to the diversity of conditions in local labour markets across the UK.

Argues that profound differences in local labour market conditions have exerted a telling influence on the New Deal’s achievements

Includes extensive new research data on the current conditions of local labour markets in the UK and local impacts of the New Deal

Illustrated by a large series of original maps and figures.

Based on numerous interviews with local and regional policy actors.

Peter Sunleyis Professor of Human Geography at the University of Southampton. He has authored around 50 articles on economic and labour geography and on local and regional economic development.

Ron Martinis Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Cambridge, Professorial Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and Fellow of the Cambridge-MIT Institute. He has published more than 20 books including Geographies of Labour Market Inequality(2003)and more than 150 articles on regional economic growth, the geography of finance, labour geography, and the geographies of state policy.

Corinne Nativelis Research Fellow in the Department of Geography and Geomatics at the University of Glasgow. Her work centres on welfare restructuring, labour market and social policy with a special focus on youth and gender. She has published several books and articles including Economic Transition, Unemployment and Active Labour Market Policy(2004).

Series Editors’ Preface.

Preface.

List of Figure.

List of Tables.

1. Locating the New Deal.

2. The Geographies of Worklessness.

3. Local Disparities in the Performance of Welfare-to-Work.

4. Welfare to Work in Local Context.

5. A Geography of Mismatch? Employers, Jobs and Training.

6. Localising Welfare to Work?.

7. Conclusions.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index.