Call for contributions
ABOUT THE JOURNAL: Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation is an independent, international inter-disciplinary peer-reviewed journal, founded in 2006. It is published twice a year and each issue is devoted to a specific theme. This thematic coherence enables each issue to be published not only as a journal issue but also as a book, published by Merlin Press, enabling it to reach a broader audience than is usual with an academic journal. More information about the aims of the journal, its editorial board and the contents of the past issues is available at www.analyticapublications.co.uk.
Volume 5, Number 2 of the journal Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation is well underway and we are now ready to receive contributions for Volume 6, number 1, a special issue on the dynamics of the international division of labour. Please email contributions for our consideration to us at info [at] analyticapublications.co.uk.
Volume 6 no 1 of Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation: Special issue on the dynamics of the international division of labour
This issue will focus on the new global division of labour and the complex inter-relationship between the movement of people to jobs (migration) on the one hand and the movement of jobs to people ('offshoring') on the other.
We welcome contributions on these and related topics, in particular:
* The role of migrant or offshored workers as a reserve army of labour
* Barriers to (and enablers of) migration and/or offshoring
* New patterns of migration in a multi-polar world
* What new geographies are emerging in the international division of labour and how stable are they?
* New offshoring destinations (e.g. in the Middle East) and the impact of political and economic crisis
* Green cards, offshoring or global sourcing? Employers' strategies for accessing a global workforce
* Forms of organisation amongst migrant or offshored workers (whether trade union based or community based)
* The role of gender in shaping patterns of migration
* Identity and class consciousness among migrant and/or offshore workers.
Volume 5, Number 1: Passing the buck: corporate restructuring and the casualisation of employment
Casual labour is often thought of as a hangover from the bad old days, when agricultural workers were hired by the day, homeworkers slaved hidden away in back rooms and street vendors eked out a living in urban slums. Modernisation, new technology, industrialisation and economic development, it might be thought, are doing away with such primitive conditions. Unfortunately, as this volume shows, this is far from being the case. In fact the logic of financialisation and the restructuring of global value chains is leading in precisely the opposite direction, with new forms of casualisation taking place right within the heart of the 'formal' sector, and employees of global corporations experiencing growing precariousness in both developed and developing countries, driven by the pressures of competition in a global economy, This important collection brings together new theoretical insights into the dynamics of the new casualisation of employment, as well as presenting empirical evidence of its spread from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Contents
Passing the buck: corporate restructuring and the casualisation of employment - Ursula Huws; Transnational corporations as financial groups - Claude Serfati; 'Everywhere in chains': Work, commodity chain analysis, and the subversion of accountability - James Lawson; Informalisation and the social relations of production: Insights from urban Karnataka, 1990-2005 - Thomas Barnes; Skirting Regulation? Trade Liberalisation, Retailers and the Informalisation of South Africa's Clothing industry - Marlea Clarke and Shane Godfrey; Labour makeup: a case study of 800,000 cosmetics resellers in Brazil - Ludmila Costhek Abilio; Temporary agency work in the Finnish health care sector: Greater flexibility and freedom in the workplace? - Hannele Palukka and Tiina Tiilikka; Work discipline and corporate training in modernising large companies in Argentina - Claudia Figari; Freeze-dried flexibility: a new morphology of labour, casualisation and value - Ricardo Antunes; The restructuring of labour in Brazil in the 2000s: flexible work and the precarisation of working life - Giovanni Alves; Review: recent publications on precarious work - Keith Randle
For older issues, see http://analytica.metapress.com/home/main.mpx