Household Strategies in a Yorkshire Mining Village

This thesis presents a case study examining the household strategies of seventeen households in a Yorkshire mining village, in a locality where the last collieries closed during 1992 and 1993. Drawing on the approaches of scholars such as Pahl, Warde, Wallace, Williams and White, the research involved desk and stakeholder research, as well as qualitative interviews with research participants in the seventeen households.

The continuing relevance of the household strategy as an approach is confirmed, and the research reveals rich data explaining how the households balanced paid work and the full range of other household tasks. Previous research highlighted a range of economic activity undertaken through informal means, including cash-in-hand working and the exchange of favours. This research reveals higher levels of reliance on commercial transactions in the formal economy than in previous studies, explained in part by the lack of local networks that many of the participants had; as well as the complexity of their needs and increasing levels of commodification in many areas of economic activity. Particular weight is also accorded to the issue of care within household strategies compared to previous studies, as well as to the specific spatial impacts which living in a relatively isolated community placed on participants.

The mining communities of the Yorkshire Coalfield have experienced huge change over the three decades after the 1984-1985 Miners Strike, and this study also contributes to the process of understanding those changes, in particular from the perspective of incomers to this mining village.