Books
Learning to Labour in post-Soviet Russia (Routledge, 2011) This book explores the changing nature of growing-up working-class in post-Soviet Russia, a country dislocated by the experience of neoliberal economic reform. Based on extensive ethnographic research in a provincial Russian region, it follows the experiences of vocational education graduates whose colleges continue to channel them into the ailing industrial and agricultural sectors. Rather than settling for transitions into ‘poor work’, the book shows how these young men and women develop a range of strategies aimed at overcoming the poverty of opportunity available to them in traditional enterprises, pursuing instead emerging opportunities in higher education, jobs in the new service sector and the prospect of migration. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, Charles Walker analyses these strategies and their significance for wider processes of social change and social stratification in post-Soviet Russia.
Masculinity, Labour and Neoliberalism: Working-Class Men in International Perspective (Palgrave 2018) This book explores the ways in which neoliberal capitalism has reshaped the lives of working-class men around the world. It focuses on the effects of employment change and of new forms of governmentality on men’s experiences of both public and private life. The book presents a range of international studies—from the US, UK, and Australia to Western and Northern Europe, Russia, and Nigeria—that move beyond discourses positing a ‘masculinity crisis’ or pathologizing working-class men. Instead, the authors look at the active ways men have dealt with forms of economic and symbolic marginalization and the barriers they have faced in doing so. While the focus of the volume is employment change, it covers a range of topics from consumption and leisure to education and family.
Masculinities and Transition: Enduring Privilege (Institute of Development Studies, 2019)
There has been significant progress in gender equality globally over recent decades, such as in school enrolment or in labour force participation rates, and in certain groups of men’s and boys’ attitudes to gender equality; particularly among younger, educated males in urban areas. Yet, historically embedded structural barriers and patriarchal relations seem to counter progress in other areas – such as unpaid care work, or women’s access to property and productive resources.
In the context of rising global and local economic inequalities, we have also seen the emergence of ‘backlash’ against women’s empowerment in many settings. This is relevant in many countries undergoing transitions where the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development operates. This report aims to explore experiences of men and constructions of masculinity in four significant transition countries – Egypt, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Ukraine – to consider how best to complement the Bank’s women-focused interventions in its projects and investments, within its mandate to enhance both the resilience of transitions and equality of opportunity.
Innovations in Youth Research (Palgrave, 2011) This book explores and celebrates imaginative and creative approaches to youth research, showcasing a wide range of innovative methods including music elicitation, mental mapping, blog analysis and mobile methods.
Youth and Social Change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (Routledge 2010) Two decades have now passed since the revolutions of 1989 swept through Eastern Europe and precipitated the collapse of state socialism across the region, engendering a period of massive social, economic and political transformation. This book explores the ways in which young people growing up in post-socialist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union negotiate a range of identities and transitions in their personal lives against a backdrop of thoroughgoing transformation in their societies. Drawing upon original empirical research in a range of countries, the book’s contributors explore the various freedoms and insecurities that have accompanied neo-liberal transformation in post-socialist countries – in spheres as diverse as consumption, migration, political participation, volunteering, employment and family formation – and examine the ways in which they have begun to re-shape different aspects of young people’s lives. In addition, while ‘social change’ is a central theme of the issue, all of the chapters in the collection indicate that the new opportunities and risks faced by young people continue both to underpin and to be shaped by familiar social and spatial divisions, not only within and between the countries addressed, but also between ‘East’ and ‘West’.
Peer-reviewed articles
Policy Reports and Third Sector Engagement
2021 Walker, C. ‘Young people leaving care in Russia’, BEARR Trust Report, June
2020 Walker, C. ‘Masculinity and Gender-Based Violence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Engaging Men in the Gender Equality Agenda’, BEARR Trust Report, January
2019 Walker, C. with Babenko, S. and Greig, A. Masculinities and Transition in Ukraine: Country Brief, Brighton: IDS (also in Russian and Arabic versions)
2019 Walker, C. with Babenko, S., ‘Chapter 5. Ukraine’, in Edström, J., Aly, R., Greig, A., Walker, C., Masculinities and Transition: Enduring Privilege?, A study commissioned by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Institute of Development Studies (IDS): Brighton (also in Russian and Arabic versions)
2019 Greig, A. and Edström, J. with Aly, R. and Walker, C. (2019) Masculinities and Transition: Summary Brief, Brighton: IDS (also in Russian and Arabic versions)
2018 Walker, C. Youth and Social Exclusion in Russia: a Scoping Study for the World Bank, TANI-IBRD: Moscow
2005 Morris, K., Edwards, A., Barnes, M., Plewis, I., with D. Allan, A. Apostolov, K. Broughton, S. Benjamin, A. Blackledge, J. Coad, L. Day Ashley, R. Evans, T. Fielding, R. Hek, N. Hughes, A. McCabe, K. Morris, P. Mason, P. Smith, N. Spicer, S. Warren, C. Walker, K. Hansen T. Leone, R. Brown, A. Sullivan, The National Evaluation of the Children’s Fund: Annual Report 2004. NECF: University of Birmingham
2004 Hoggarth, L., and Smith, D. I., with M. Payne, B. Merton, A. Apostolov, A. Morgan, M. Semenchuk, S. Yates, J. Widdowson, H. Bradley, M. Cole, J. Frost, N. Mukherjee, K. Paton, M. Studholme, K. Artaraz, L. Bowes, S. Gray, S. Sagu, D. Hughes, L. Flint, E. Head, V. Knight, K. Morgan, J. Roberts, A. Skinner, S. Weaver, J. Wood, and C. Walker, Understanding the Impact of Connexions on Young People at Risk, Research Report RR607, Department for Education and Skills
Book chapters
2019 Roth, Silke and Walker, Charlie, ‘Gender relations’. In, Merkel, Wolfgang, Kollmorgen, Raj and Wagener, Hans-Jürgen (eds.) Handbook of Political, Social and Economic Transformation. Oxford. Oxford University Press, pp. 509-514.
2017 Walker, C. and Roberts, S. ‘Masculinity, labour and neoliberalism: reviewing the field’, in Walker, C., and Roberts, S. (eds) Masculinity, Labour and Neoliberalism: Working-Class Men in International Perspective, Basingstoke: Palgrave
2016 Walker, C. ‘In search of “stability”: working-class men, masculinity and wellbeing in contemporary Russia’. In Cornwall, A., Lindisfarne, N. and Karioris, F. (eds) Masculinities under Neoliberalism (Zed books: London)
2012 Walker, C. ‘Re-inventing themselves? Gender, employment and subjective well-being amongst working-class young Russians’. In Salmenniemi, Suvi (ed.) Rethinking Class in Russia. Farnham, GB, Ashgate, 221-240.
2012 Walker, C. ‘From “inheritance” to individualization: disembedding working-class youth transitions in post-Soviet Russia’. In, Walker, Charles and Stephenson, Svetlana (eds.) Youth and Social Change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Abingdon, GB, Routledge, 60-74.
2011 Walker, C., ‘Positionality and difference in cross-cultural youth research: being “other” in the former Soviet Union’. In Heath, S., and Walker, C. (eds), Innovations in Youth Research. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
2011 Heath, S. and Walker, C. ‘Innovations in youth research – an introduction’. In, Heath, Sue and Walker, Charlie (eds.) Innovations in Youth Research. Basingstoke, GB, Palgrave.
2011 Heath, S. and Walker, C. ‘Conclusion’. In, Heath, Sue and Walker, Charlie (eds.) Innovations in Youth Research. Basingstoke, GB, Palgrave, 248-255.
2011 Walker, C. ‘From “inheritance” to individualization: disembedding working-class youth transitions in post-Soviet Russia’. In, Walker, Charlie and Stephenson, Svetlana (eds.) Youth and Social Change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Abingdon, GB, Routledge.
2011 Walker, C. and Stephenson, S. ‘Youth and social change in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union’. In, Walker, Charlie and Stephenson, Svetlana (eds.) Youth and Social Change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Abingdon, GB, Routledge, 1-13.
2010 Walker, C. ‘From “inheritance” to individualisation: disembedding working-class youth transitions in post-Soviet Russia’. In, MacDonald, Robert, Shildrick, Tracey and Blackman, Shane (eds.) Young People, Class and Place. Abingdon, GB, Routledge, 73-87.
2010 Walker, C. Molodezhnie issledovaniya kak kul’turnyi obmen: refleksiya na skhozhest’ i raznost’ v pole. In, Peremena Mest: Poputnaya Sotsiologiya. Ulyanovsk, Russia, Ul’ianovsk State University.
2010 Walker, C. ‘Classed and gendered “Learning Careers”: transitions from vocational to higher education in Russia’. In, Johnson, David (ed.) Politics, Modernisation and Educational Reform in Russia: from Past to Present (Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 20, 1). Oxford, GB, Symposium Books, 99-120.
2005 Walker, C. Reforming vocational education in post-Soviet Russia: combining new and old approaches. In, Yasin, Y.G. (ed.) Modernizatsiya Ekonomiki i Vyraschivanie Institutov. Moscow, RU, Moscow State University – Higher School of Economics.
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