When futures end: a regional-level inquiry into the consequences of deindustrialisation

我的提议的核心是希望更好地理解去工业化的本质，尤其是结构性失业是如何体现在不同行业、地区和世代之间的生活水平和经济问题上的。我们这些经济和社会历史学家需要问问自己，当我们在19世纪末和20世纪的背景下谈论衰落时，我们真正的意思是什么--实际上，我们应该如何衡量衰落。我认为，仅有收入衡量标准是不够的，因此应该辅之以涵盖教育、健康和长寿的指标。组装一个全面的数据集--并执行可靠的量化分析--是我这个项目的主要目标。比较不同的行业和地区，我的工作将揭示解释各种去工业化经历的政治、经济和地理机制。撇开特定的统计工具不谈，我工作的复杂性在于从数据中产生有意义结果的方法。这个项目不仅仅是一个编目工作，因此解释损害是如何造成的(以及如何减轻)，将与量化损害本身一样重要。在这里，我的工作将采用移民和工业化历史学家使用的方法(特别是借鉴后者的无父和代际文献)，以构建一幅全面的图景，了解推动后工业化英国结果(以及它们的持久性)的力量。在英国的政治话语中，工业失业有着特殊的地位。即使是在我自己的家乡--大默西塞德郡衰落的典型案例--竞选期间在家门口的谈话中，很少会提到衰落和地区分歧。随着英国脱欧占用了大量的精力和时间，被留下来的社区的困境重新引起了政界的兴趣，尽管它经常表现为未经证实的言辞。这个项目之所以重要，正是因为它触及了这些政治和经济问题的核心--不仅让我们能够了解持续的贫困和社区的困境，而且还能了解政治原因和影响--为政策制定者和更广泛的社会提供重要的答案。这也是一场对经济和社会史研究具有重要意义的辩论。对工人阶级生活水平、移民和经历的研究不仅在去工业化文献中开辟了新的天地，而且还提供了可以为性别、家庭和城市变化方面的工作提供信息的材料。它将为经济学家提供可检验的结果，并开发出一种方法，可用于研究其他去工业化现象--尤其是美国“铁锈地带”的去工业化。

At the core of my proposal is a desire to build a better understanding of the nature of deindustrialisation, and in particular, how structural unemployment has manifested itself in living standards and economic problems across industries, regions, and generations. We economic and social historians need to ask ourselves what we really mean when we talk about decline in a late-19th and 20th century context-and indeed, how it should be measured. I believe that income measures alone are inadequate, and as such should be supplemented with indicators capturing education, health, and longevity. The assembly of a comprehensive dataset-and the execution of a robust quantitativeanalysis-is my project's primary aim. Comparing different industries and regions, my work will uncover the political, economic, and geographical mechanics that explain the various deindustrialisation experiences.Specific statistical tools aside, my work's complexity lies in the approaches used to produce meaningful results from the data. This project is not merely a cataloguing exercise, thus explaining how the damage has been done (and mitigated against) will be just as important as quantifying the damage itself.Here, my work will adapt methodologies used by historians of migration and industrialisation (drawing in particular on the fatherlessness and intergenerational literature of the latter) to build a comprehensive picture of the forces that have driven outcomes (and, indeed, their persistence) in post-industrial Britain. Industrial unemployment has a special place in Britain's political discourse. Even in my own home town-a textbook case of decline in Greater Merseyside-few conversations had on the doorstep during a campaign will occur without the mention of decline and regional divides. With Brexit occupying an enormous amount of energy and time, the plight of communities 'left behind' has garnered renewed interest in political circles, although too often it manifests itself in unsubstantiated rhetoric. This project matters precisely because it gets to the heart of these political and economic issues-allowing us to understand not only persistent poverty and the plight of communities but also the political causes and effects-providing important answers for policymakers and wider society.This also a debate that matters for economic and social history research. Not only does the study of working-class living standards, migration, and experiences break new ground in the deindustrialisation literature, it equally provides material that can inform work on gender, the family, and urban change. It will produce testable results for economists, as well as develop a methodology that can be applied when examining other deindustrialisations-particularly that of the American 'rust belt'.