Matthew Johnson is Lecturer in Politics at Lancaster University, UK. His research examines issues such as Englishness and the relationship between culture, policy and wellbeing. He led a participatory project entitled ‘A Cross-Cultural Working Group on "Good Culture" and Precariousness’, which involved exchanges between people from Ashington and Aboriginal Australian communities.

• Introduction: precariousness, community and participation 1. The role of coal-mining towns in social theory: past, present and future 2. The isolated mass and contemporary social theory 3. Changing precarities in the Irish housing system: supplier-generated changes in security of tenure for domiciled households 4. Understanding housing precarity: more than access to a shelter, housing is essential for a decent life 5. Precarious living in liminal spaces: neglect of the Gypsy–Traveller site 6. Gypsy-Traveller sites in the UK: power, history, informality – a response to Richardson 7. Traveller precarity, public apathy, public service inaction, a reply to Jo Richardson’s article from a community work perspective 8. Universities as key responders to education inequality 9. An ongoing challenge and a chance to diversify university outreach to tackle inequality: a response to O’Sullivan, O’Tuama and Kenny 10. A reply to O’Sullivan, O’Tuama and Kenny 11. Affective collaboration in the Westfjords of Iceland 12. Protean possibilities: attending to affect in collaborative research – a reply to Valdimar Halldórsson 13. Cooperation in adversity: an evolutionary approach 14. Cooperation in adversity: a political theorist’s response