This paper reflects on the development of the idea of social exclusion in European and particularly in British discourses. When it first emerged, social exclusion seemed to add to little to poverty and in some guises carried a great deal of behaviourist ideological baggage, or blamed the poor. Over time, however, experience in the UK has shown that social exclusion has broadened the research agenda and opened up new possibilities for policy. This paper contributes to these debates by presenting new estimates of poverty and exclusion in Britain using data from the Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey. The estimates confirm that poverty and exclusion are related, but distinct concepts. There remains the question of whether social exclusion has not entered official discussions in Australia as a result of a ‘Howard effect’ or because of some more fundamental resistance in the Australian political — and academic — culture.

An emerging trend in Australia, over the past twenty or so years, has been for employment to become increasingly polarised into households where either no adult is working (jobless households) or all adults are working (all-work households). Despite this, relatively little research has been undertaken in Australia which has focussed specifically on these households. This article seeks to go some way towards filling this gap. Specifically, data from the first wave of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Survey in Australia (HILDA) Survey are used to: (i) quantify the incidence of jobless households in Australia; (ii) identify the characteristics of individuals that are associated with membership of a jobless household; and (iii) examine some of the financial consequences of living in a jobless household. The analysis finds that household joblessness in 2001 remains pervasive with strong associations with factors generally thought to influence individual joblessness such as age, education, ethnicity, illness and family background. It is also found that poverty and financial stress are more a function of household joblessness than of individual joblessness.

Are people receiving unemployment-related income support more likely to exit from income support if they live in a stronger labour market? This paper examines this question using data from the Australian Department of Family and Community Services Longitudinal Data Set (LDS). We find that, controlling for other observed characteristics, living in an area with a one percentage point lower unemployment rate is associated with a 5 per cent increase in the probability of exit. This implies a 9 per cent decrease in the mean duration of benefit receipt. This should be considered an upper bound for the impact of regional labour market characteristics as it partly reflects the fact that people with low skill levels can only afford to live in high unemployment regions. To control for unobserved characteristics (such as skill levels) that are constant over time we look at changes in income support among people who move location. This suggests a much lower, but still significant, impact of local labour market conditions on unemployment benefit receipt.

A great deal of the research into the determinants of labour market outcomes has focussed on the role of human capital and the structure of the labour market. Relatively little attention has been paid to the role of social capital. This paper investigates the extent to which an individual’s social capital relates to their labour market outcomes. The relationships between social capital and labour force status and social capital and job search method are explored using data collected from a national random sample of Australians. Both a network and typology approach to measuring social capital are used.

A central feature of the Asian currency crisis of 1997/1998 was the vast prior capital inflow into the region, and the later rapid reversal of that movement. In seeking to explain why this outflow of capital took place and was so devastating for the countries concerned, various writers have laid blame upon a combination of connected lending, poor bank supervision, moral hazard and “crony capitalism”.

Our emphasis is different. Much of the capital inflow financed a vast over-expansion of commercial real estate development. Plunging real estate values accompanied by severe difficulties in the banking and financial sector were common occurrences across the region. The argument we advance is that property plays a special role in banks’ portfolios and that large international portfolio capital flows mediated by banks will usually lead to rapidly appreciating asset prices which will result in banking/currency crises.

Australian universities now have a headcount casualisation rate near the national workforce average. Reasons for, and impacts of, this development are explored, and an argument is made for the role of industrial regulation in reconciling requirements for flexibility, security and equity in university employment. Responses to a large survey of casual academic and general staff suggest that this employment mode is a minority preference. Discrete groups of casual university staff, including those seeking university careers, those with other secure income sources, and students in transit to other careers, experience different forms and levels of insecurity and inequity. Appropriately targeted regulatory responses thus include criteria-based caps, a general staff conversion mechanism, a work value review, access to increments and service entitlements, and workplace representation rights.

The events following the collapse of Ansett Airlines in September 2001 provide an opportunity to explore the impact of internal labour markets on post-retrenchment labour market outcomes. This paper traces the labour market experiences of a sample of 649 former Ansett Airlines employees in the first eleven months after the airline’s initial closure. It reveals that many workers spent long periods in an employment limbo — officially ‘stood down’ but not retrenched — while waiting for their Ansett jobs to be resurrected under new ownership. During that time, many accepted fragmented, short-term placements in ‘bad’ jobs. After this initial period of uncertainty, however, many former Ansett employees found their way back to ‘good’ jobs — either in the aviation sector or in firms offering secure primary segment employment conditions. The uneven outcomes experienced by different groups of workers reflect the interconnections between workers’ perceptions of their options, their attachments to Ansett, their age and household circumstances in the context of weak demand for their skills. The paper illuminates the ways in which the personal loyalties, social networks and work expectations developed within Ansett’s rigid internal labour market shaped retrenched workers’ job search, recruitment and re-employment outcomes.