'What is fascinating in these accounts is the light they shed on how the identities which result are shaped by the interplay between coercion and resistance, initiative and inertia; how the employers' ad hoc demands for particular discrete skills and competencies are countered by workers' aspirations for coherently demarcated occupations which provide personal identity, development, and status; and how these in turn are shaped by specific histories and geographies … such discussions could not be more timely.' International Review of Social History