Episode description

Middle class drug dealers: Laurie Taylor discusses a study into suburban drug selling amongst well heeled teens in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta, USA. The author, Richard Wright, Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, reveals a world which provides a striking counterpoint to the devastation of the drug war in poor, minority communities. Instead, he found that middle class 'dealing' rarely disrupted conventional career paths or involved legal risks and violence. A British perspective is provided by Richard Hobbs, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex.

Also, white collar jobs which move to the Global South. Shehzad Nadeem, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York, charts the impact on emerging economies of the globalisation of IT and service sector work. Is it producing upward mobility in countries like India?

Producer: Jayne Egerton.