Getting by or getting on: gender, intergenerational earning and caring in deindustrializing localities in Lanarkshire, Scotland

This article explores how British working-class households have navigated deindustrialization, rising economic inequality and the changing provision of public services since the mid-twentieth century. It explores how these changes have been interpreted using oral history testimonies from people born between the 1940s and the 1970s who have lived and worked their entire lives in Lanarkshire, Scotland. Two juxtaposed narratives of ‘getting on’ and ‘getting by’ structured these recollections, which were primarily recorded with women interviewees. ‘Getting on’ centred on social mobility associated with material improvements, private homeownership and professional white-collar employment. Conversely, ‘getting by’ was underpinned by the struggle for survival in difficult circumstances conditioned by industrial job losses, dwindling public housing stocks and diminishing public transport and greenspace. We explore these narratives across three themes: household budgeting, the commodification of housing through council house sales and social and familial care. The diverging narratives nevertheless coalesce in demonstrating the centrality of the household unit for economic strategizing which was increasingly characterized by vernacular equality in companionate marriages. They also demonstrate the centrality of women’s paid and unpaid caring work but underline a communal loss associated with diminished public resources even among those who got on.