The authors wish to acknowledge support from the Economic and Social Research Council for the project entitled ‘The Making of the Precariat’, funded under Phase 1 of the Secondary Data Analysis Initiative (ES/K3755/1). We would also like to acknowledge the Understanding Society team at the University of Essex, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and NatCen Social Research. At Glasgow, Niamh Friel and Hannah Walters both assisted with analysis and reporting.
Our greatest debt is to David Ashton, Emeritus Professor at the University of Leicester, and Ken Roberts, Emeritus Professor at the University of Liverpool. Dave and Ken not only provided us with the opening and closing chapters for this volume, they also provided us with original data they collected in the 1980s and helped us understand some of the context. As colleagues we have worked with in different ways over several decades, they also inspired some of the thinking behind the book. We would also like to acknowledge the research teams who worked on these two projects.
Thanks also to Emily Briggs and Elena Chiu at Routledge for their patience!
Liberty without protection can give rise to the very worst of servitudes, that of need.
(Castel 2003: 6)