This volume seeks to re-energise the paradigm of the New International Labour Studies by detailing how struggles over the construction, reproduction, utilisation and restructuring of labour forces are the contested social foundations upon which the global economy stands. Through a combination of theoretical works and a series of case studies, the volume highlights the cutting edge of international labour studies. Its expands on three pivotal areas of study within the discipline:1) the social construction of new labour forces across an expanding international division of labour; 2) the self-organising potential of workers, particularly within non-traditional sectors; and 3) the possibilities for transborder labour movements to help address the asymmetrical power relationships between globalised capital and localised labour. In addressing these themes, the volume helps explain not only how the contemporary international division of labour is produced and reproduced, but also the strengths and limits to current attempts to overcome its unequal and divisive nature. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

From the rise of fully automated factories to the creation of new migrant workforces, the world of work, employment and production is rapidly changing. By reshaping the global distribution of wealth, jobs and opportunities, these processes are unleashing profound social and environmental tensions, as well as new political movements. As a means to address these crucial themes, Global Labour Studies elaborates an innovative interdisciplinary framework that builds upon the concepts of power, networks, space and livelihoods. This approach is deployed to explore core topics including global production networks, labour market dynamics, formal and informal sectors, migration and forced labour, agriculture and environment, corporate social responsibility and new labour organizations. Written in a lively and engaging format that draws upon a diverse range of illustrative case studies, the book provides the reader with an accessible repertoire of analytical tools and offers an essential guide to the field. This makes it a uniquely rich text for undergraduate courses on global labour issues across the fields of geography, politics, sociology, labour studies and international development.

This timely book introduces a fresh perspective on youth unemployment by analysing it as a global phenomenon. Ross Fergusson and Nicola Yeates argue that only by incorporating analysis of the dynamics of the global economy and global governance can we make convincing, comprehensive sense of these developments. The authors present substantial new evidence spanning a century pointing to the strong relationships between youth unemployment, globalisation, economic crises and consequent harms to young people’s social and economic welfare worldwide. The book notably encompasses data and analysis spanning the Global South as well as the Global North.

Call centers have come, in the last three decades, to define the interaction between corporations, governments, and other institutions and their respective customers, citizens, and members. The offshoring and outsourcing of call center employment, part of the larger information technology and information-technology-enabled services sectors, continues to be a growing practice amongst governments and corporations in their attempts at controlling costs and providing new services. While incredible advances in technology have permitted the use of distant and "offshore" labor forces, the grander reshaping of an international political economy of communications has allowed for the acceleration of these processes. New and established labor unions have responded to these changes in the global regimes of work by seeking to organize call center workers. These efforts have been assisted by a range of forces, not least of which is the condition of work itself, but also attempts by global union federations to build a bridge between international unionism and local organizing campaigns in the Global South and Global North. Through an examination of trade union interventions in the call center industries located in Canada and India, this book contributes to research on post-industrial employment by using political economy as a juncture between development studies, the sociology of work, and labor studies.

This volume explores how difference is constructed, manifested, mobilised and obscured in socially uneven societies, particularly those fuelled by neoliberal economic growth in the recent years.The book approaches difference as a double edged concept that allows one to make sense of the tensions that are played out between ?cosmopolitan? convergence and ?multicultural? diversity, between expanding middle classes and increasingly disenfranchised poor groups, between the global and the local. The chapters in this volume present a series of empirical explorations of how difference is articulated, desired, levelled, governed and even subverted in the socio-economically uneven landscapes of India and China. They examine how difference emerges out of daily practice, categorisation processes, dividing practices, nation building efforts and identity projects.Through these empirical studies, we see how difference is articulated along a number of axes: differentiations of groups or persons according to hierarchies of superiority/inferiority; the demarcation of difference as something that is potentially disruptive and therefore in need of containment; the ?celebration? of difference as diversity, and finally, the ways in which difference comes to be internalised in the shaping of individual identities. Another common theme that binds a number of contributions is the exploration of the role of the state in constructing and controlling these differences, and the ways in which these interventions rearrange the social-political landscapes.This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Since the onset of global crisis in recent years, academics and economic theorists from various political and cultural backgrounds have been drawn to Marx's analysis of the inherent instability of capitalism. The rediscovery of Marx is based on his continuing capacity to explain the present. In the context of what some commentators have described as a "Marx renaissance", the aim of this book is to make a close study of Marx's principal writings in relation to the major problems of our own society, and to show why and how some of his theories constitute a precious tool for the understanding and critique of the world in the early twenty-first century. The book brings together varied reflections on the Marxian oeuvre, drawing on different perspectives and fields, and argues its case in two different parts. The first will encompass such diverse areas and themes as political thought, economics, nationalism, ethnicity, post-capitalist society, freedom, democracy, emancipation, and alienation, showing in each case how Marx has still today an invaluable contribution to make. The second presents a complete and rigorous account of the dissemination and the reception of Marx’s work throughout the world in the last decade. Both parts make a significant contribution to the current research on Marx and Marxisms. This book was originally published as a special issue of Socialism and Democracy.

Workers’ Education in the Global South explores the historical development of radical workers’ education in South Africa as one particular strand within the broader tradition of radical adult education. Drawing on the theoretical resources of Activity Theory, Gramsci, Freire and others, it investigates the key features of workers’ education as a form of pedagogy with a unique history and logic of practice, and explores how it has been shaped by its location within labour and other social movements as well as its ‘southern’ location within the global political economy. Successive chapters explore its counter-hegemonic but contested purposes, its knowledge practices that seek to overcome the historical divide between intellectual and manual labour, and a pedagogy which often assumes didactic forms but which retains a democratic character through its embeddedness in working class experience. It illustrates the rich processes of experiential learning that happen through day-to-day organising, in workers’ cultural activity as well as through mass action. It argues that this tradition of workers’ education currently stands at a crossroads, as global neoliberal market policies and post-apartheid education and training policies threaten to undermine its radical social vision, and concludes by offering ideas on how this tradition of radical workers’ education might be renewed.

Part of the Comparative Work and Employment Relations series, Putting Labour in its Place is an edited collection, containing cutting-edge research and theoretical innovation on global value chains, the nature of work and labour process theory. It addresses the different processes around the world that each add value to the goods or services being produced; whilst also analysing the idea of labour itself and the exploitation surrounding it. Key benefits: - Written by leading international academics. - A landmark text combining the growing interest in global value chains with labour process theory. - Provides up-to-date critical analysis of global developments.

This comprehensive survey of continuity and change in trade unions looks at five primarily English-speaking countries: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The authors consider the recent re-examination by trade union movements of the basis of union organization and activity in the face of a harsher economic and political climate. One of the impetuses for this re-examination has been the recent history of unions in the USA. American models of renewal have inspired Australia, New Zealand and the UK, while Canada has undergone a cautious examination of the US model with an attempt to develop a distinctive approach. This book aims to provide a thorough grounding for informed discussion and debate about the position and place of trade unions in modern economies.

Though labour market regulations have been blamed for the poor economic performance of many developing countries, the evidence on which this argument rests is weak. Through a survey of different labour market institutions in developing countries, this book reaffirms the importance of labour market institutions in this era of globalization.