"We have a little bit more finesse, as a nation": Constructing the Polish Worker in London's Building Sites

Abstract:  This paper examines how male Polish builders in London construct themselves relationally to English builders as they negotiate their place within the labour hierarchies of the building site and in the London labour market. This is based on semi-structured interviews and participant photographs taken by Polish migrants arriving in the aftermath of the European Union expansion in May 2004, and now working in building sites across London. These buildings sites are mundane elements of a global city which employ transnational labour, and where differences between Polish and English builders become significant discursive tools of survival in a competitive labour market. The paper illustrates how Polish workers mark themselves as "superior" to English builders through the versatility of their embodied skills, work ethic, artistic qualities, and finesse in their social interactions on the building site. This paper thus provides new ways of understanding the meanings of work and the complexity of identity politics within the spaces of low-paid manual work in a global city.     

Labour Market Dynamics in Resource Dependent Regions: an Examination of the Western Australian Goldfields

Labour shortages have become an increasingly significant barrier to economic development in regional Australia. Many firms and government agencies are operating below capacity as a result of their inability to fill jobs. In the mineral resources sector, this has been compounded by rapidly rising demand for commodities and the very remote locations of many mine sites. This paper explores the dynamics of labour shortages in the minerals sector of the Western Australian Goldfields. It demonstrates close linkages between commodity price, labour supply and demand, and resource output. Against the background of a state-wide ‘resources boom’, the paper also points to an increase in intra- and inter- regional competition for labour.     

Dewey's Materialist Philosophy of Education: A Resource for Critical Pedagogues?

This article looks at some similarities and differences between key elements of Karl Marx's critique of capital and John Dewey's philosophy of education, both substantively and methodologically. Substantively, their analyses of the relation between human beings and the natural world—what Marx calls concrete labour and Dewey generally calls action—converge. Similarly, methodologically they converge when looked at from the point of view of their analysis of the relation between earlier and later forms of life. In Marx's case, it is his comparison of the relation between capitalist society and earlier societies. In Dewey's case, it is his comparison of the relation between adult experience and childhood experience. Dewey's practical realization of his distinction of adult and childhood experience in the creation of a materialist curriculum embodied in the Dewey laboratory school in Chicago (of which Dewey was director from 1896 to 1904) also accords in many ways with Marx's theory of concrete labour. On the other hand, their analyses diverge substantively when viewed from the point of view of their critique of capitalist society; Marx united concrete labour with his concept of abstract labour to provide a basis for criticizing modern society on its own terms rather than in terms of Dewey's concept of a cultural lag. The divergence is explained by their divergent methodologies in analyzing modern capitalist society. Despite this difference, the article concludes that critical pedagogues would do well to incorporate Dewey's materialist curriculum into their own practices—with modifications.     

The periphery revisited: Polish post-war historiography on the working class and the new global labour history

This paper explores the characteristics of post-war Polish historiography on the working class and relates it to current trends in global labour history. Although, in Poland, labour history never existed as a separate field, many historians focused their studies on either working-class history or the history of the workers’ movement. After 1945, Polish historiography was circumscribed by political and ideological considerations; however – except during the brief Stalinist period (1951–56) – Marxist methodology was not imposed or applied uncritically. In fact, discussions about the role of the working class in history that began after 1956 generated research interest in new groups of workers and labour relations. Much of this research concerns recently highlighted aspects of labour history, such as marginal groups of workers or free versus unfree labour. Polish historians’ reinterpretation of Marxist orthodoxy proceeded from their empirical studies of nineteenth-century Polish lands – at the periphery of Western capitalist development – as well as from their theoretical influences. This article argues that some aspects of the Polish historiography on the working class qualify it as part of labour history’s heritage, despite the historiography’s significant limitations.     

Gender and Global Labour Migrations: Incorporating Skilled Workers

Female labour migration has increased in the past two decades, and has become more complex and interconnected, attracting considerable attention from researchers and policy makers. Earlier debates on the relationship between production and reproduction have resurfaced in a period of changing configurations of welfare states; contemporary theorisations of global labour migration are now paying attention to the role of women in the reproductive sector. However, much of the literature has focused on migrants who enter the lesser‐skilled sectors, in particular domestic labour. In this paper we argue that the migration of women into skilled sectors of the labour market, especially in health, alters our understanding of the role of migrant women in social reproduction. Migrant women are present in multiple sites and spheres of reproduction beyond the household and recognising the different ways in which they are incorporated into globalised labour markets challenges simplistic representations of migrant women and draws out a fuller appreciation of their contribution to social reproduction and welfare in the First World.     

Trade Union Internationalism in the Age of Seattle

It is widely recognised within and around the labour movement that labour (as wage work, as class identity, in the trade union form, as a partner in industrial relations, as a radical-democratic social movement, as a part of civil society) is in profound crisis. Even more is this the case for labour as an international movement at a time in which the old international capitalist order is being challenged by the new capitalist disorder. Recovery requires a critique of traditional labour internationalism, reconceptualisation, new kinds of analysis and a new dialogue and dialectic between interested parties. Presented here in turn are the following: (1) a critique of the union internationalism of the national/industrial/colonial era; (2) a reconceptualisation of unionism and labour internationalism appropriate to a globalised/networked/informatised capitalist era; (3) the millennial dialogue on labour and globalisation; and (4) the role of communication, culture and the new information and communication technology. The conclusion stresses the centrality of networking, communication and dialogue to the creation of a new labour internationalism. An extended resource list on international unionism is attached.     

Labour Migration and the Swedish Labour Market Model: a case study of recruitment of Yugoslav workers to Svenska Fläktfabriken in Växjö, 1969–1970

This essay deals with active labour recruitment from Yugoslavia to Sweden at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s. It is a case study of recruitments of foreign-born workers to one particular manufacturing industry. It focuses primarily on trade-union actions and strategies in connection with the recruitments, analysed in the light of the power relations within the corporatist Swedish labour market model. This approach illuminates how the Swedish labour market model dealt with an issue involving both conflicting and coincident interests between labour and capital, with the state as an intermediary. But the recruitments are also analysed from the recruited workers' points of view. The essay reveals great union influence in the process of labour recruitment, and suggests that the national Swedish labour market authority only approved as many work permits for non-Nordic workers as the trade union concerned accepted. This power, in combination with the shortage of workers, could be used by the unions as a forceful instrument in their struggle to transform working life according to their members' interests. Accordingly, the labour recruitments to Sweden were framed by the power relations and the corporative practices within the Swedish labour market model.     

Spaces of labour control: comparative perspectives from Southeast Asia

This paper seeks to identify the spatialized dimensions of labour control in sites of rapid and recent industrialization in Southeast Asia. Using a comparative analysis of locations in Penang (Malaysia), Batam (Indonesia) and Cavite/Laguna (the Philippines), it is argued that the construction and control of space has been used to enhance control over the working body, and, in particular, to contain labour organization, unionization and collective bargaining. Three broader arguments are made. First, that labour geographies need to be cognizant of the spatialized politics of labour beyond a narrow focus on the trade union movement. Second, that space is a potent tool in labour control and must be explicitly considered alongside the identity–based control strategies and institutional structures that have usually informed studies of labour regimes in newly industrializing contexts. Finally, a comparative perspective on local labour markets, and control regimes in particular, shows that the ways in which space is constructed and controlled differs between contexts, implying that universal judgements on the relevance or importance of particular arenas or spaces for labour politics should be reserved.     

Plantation Labour and Economie Crisis in Cameroon

The few existing studies on the response of labour to the economic crisis and structural adjustment in African countries tend to focus on the (oppositional) relations between the state and central labour organizations. They largely ignore the response of workers and unions at the workplace. This article describes how workers and unions in the tea estates of Cameroon have dealt with the economic crisis and structural adjustment. It shows that the workers have adopted various strategies to cope with the structural adjustment measures planned and implemented by the management in close co-operation with the state-controlled unions. Two striking facts to emerge from the analysis are that the majority of the estate workers have never completely abandoned their ‘traditional’ militancy, and that gender differences in the degree and modes of labour resistance tend to be slight.     

Political prayer and the dignity of labour: Botswana's workers' movement

The article draws on recent fieldwork to explore the intersection between class and Christian faith in the collective worldview of African labour unions in Botswana. Workers across different churches appeal to a Christian God whom they believe supports their struggle for dignity and a living wage. It is this axiomatic faith that underpins the spiritual interpretation of worker vocation and worker solidarity. Moreover, in Botswana, unlike in some neighbouring African countries, no contradiction is perceived between workers' left‐wing, socialist leanings and their Christian faith. Workers' identities are equally intertwined in their affiliation to their churches and to the labour movement in Botswana. Above all, I argue, following E.P. Thompson and other historians of early British and American labour movements, that the sanctification of labour dignifies for manual workers their physical labour, despite their lack of formal education.     

Spaces of Resistance,Spaces of Respite: Franchise housekeepers keeping house in the workplace and at home

As a contribution to a growing geography of domestic labour, I offer this micro-scale study as a glimpse into the lives of franchise housekeepers. This study sheds light on the ways women cope with their labour both in the workplace and at home. Scrutiny of the women's ordinary actions and reactions to their labour demonstrate how they devise coping strategies through mundane, common, everyday acts and forge spaces of resistance and respite. I discuss these strategies and spaces by drawing on in-depth interviews with 14 women employed in housekeeping services franchises.     

Labour internationalism and the public sector: The case of the Public Services International

This paper sets out the need to conceptualise labour internationalism in the public sector, given its distinct political character and orientation. Our analysis adds to a literature on labour internationalism that hitherto has mainly depicted strategies of unions in private sector industries. To better understand the reasons for upscaling trade union efforts in a sector where the main employer remains the institutional apparatus of the nation-state, we have interviewed office bearers in the most important global union federation organising across different public services – Public Services International (PSI) – asking them to explain their political and strategic considerations. We find that the distinct role of the nation state as an employer, the public character of work and specific relations between public sector workers and the users of services, are all determinants in shaping labour transnationalism in the public sector. This in turn leads to a greater emphasis on alliances with social movements and oppositional campaigns, representing a radical global political unionism. Neoliberal austerity and privatisation measures have reinforced the importance of such political relationships and power, but also challenged their organisational foundations. However, alliance-building is not PSI's sole strategy. We find that office bearers at the transnational level combines three strategic rationales through orientations that we have labelled the political-institutional, the movement-popular and the industrial-corporate. We also suggest that employing these sensitising concepts can bolster the scholarly treatment of understanding labour internationalism and its strategy repertoires more generally.     

Locating Neoliberalism in Dubai: Migrant Workers and Class Struggle in the Autocratic City

Abstract: In recent years, portrayals of neoliberalism in Dubai have often hinged on narratives about the hyper‐exploitation of migrant workers in the city. In this paper I interrogate these narratives by exploring the governance of lower‐waged construction migrants and their recent role in market‐led processes of urbanization. Through a focus on the recent growth of private worker welfare initiatives and dozens of illegal labour strikes led by migrant builders, I draw attention to the fraught and contradictory character of autocratic neoliberalism that operates in the governance of these workers, and point to workers’ bodily capital and the construction labour camp as two emergent sites in which these labour politics are unfolding. I argue that these social reproductive realms of the body and the mass‐worker household have offered a temporary spatial fix to the limitations of autocratic rule in a neoliberalizing city, while also conjuring moments of political possibility for construction migrants.     

Multi‐scalar Labour Agency in Global Production Networks: Contestation and Crisis in the South African Fruit Sector

Integration into global production networks poses significant challenges, and also opens up opportunities, for labour agency. Governance by lead firms affects working conditions and can drive precarious employment; this interacts with and can constrain national labour legislation covering labour rights. The global production networks (GPN) approach facilitates examination of commercial value chains, their interaction with institutionally and societally embedded labour markets, and potential leverage points for labour contestation transcending local, national and global scales. This informs analysis of commercial/societal articulations as contested processes opening space for multi‐scalar labour agency within global production networks. This article examines how tensions between global commercial and societally embedded dimensions of global production networks drive precarious work, and seeks to understand the implications for emergent forms of multi‐scalar community‐based labour agency. These questions are explored through an examination of labour casualization and contestation in South African fruit production in 2012–13, using the GPN approach. The authors find that multi‐scalar channels of labour agency leveraging both global commercial and government actors can enable reworking by unorganized community‐based labour to bargain for better pay and conditions, but if the underlying global commercial logic is to be challenged, more systemic strategies are required.     

Poverty,School and Work: Children during the Economic Crisis in Indonesia

The problem of child labour in Indonesia, although generally less prevalent than in other developing countries at a similar stage of development, is significant. As in other countries, this study finds a strong link between the child labour phenomenon and poverty, with the profile of child labour largely mirroring the profile of poverty. Furthermore, poverty is found to be an important determinant of whether children work. However, working does not always completely eliminate a child's opportunity to obtain formal education: children from poor households can still go to school by undertaking part‐time work to pay for their education, implying that banning these children from working may force them to drop out of school instead. Since the phenomenon of child labour is strongly associated with and determined by poverty, the most effective policy for eliminating child labour is through poverty alleviation. Other policies that can foster the rate of reduction in child labour are those which make it easier for children from poor families to access education and increase the opportunity cost of working by improving the quality of education. Such policies will increase the rate of return to education.     

Who were the Reunion ‘Coolies’ of 19th-century New Caledonia?

The history of the importation of ‘coolie’ labour from Reunion Island to New Caledonia in the 19th century is little known. While most historians mention the groups of ‘Malabars’ brought in to help colonists from Reunion set up the New Caledonian sugar industry, few have delved into the backgrounds or indeed identities of this particular group of contract labourers. Who were they? Where did they come from? What languages did they speak? What was their status in the colony? What became of them after the demise of the sugar industry? Based on archival research, this paper traces the arrival and settlement history in southern New Caledonia of the sugar industry ‘coolies’ and discusses the problems of status and identity among this surprisingly heterogeneous group.     

Mining Boom,Labour Market Segmentation and Social Inequality in the Congolese Copperbelt

The study of the impacts of new mining projects in Africa is generally set in a normative debate about their possible contribution to development, which leads to a representation of African societies as divided between beneficiaries and victims of foreign investments. Based on research in the Congolese copperbelt, this article aims to examine in more detail the inequalities generated by the recent mining boom by taking the processes of labour market segmentation as a starting point. It shows that the labour market in the mining sector has progressively been organized along three intersecting lines that divide it: the first is between employment in industrial and artisanal mining companies, the second is between jobs for mining or subcontracting companies and the third is between jobs for expatriates, Congolese skilled workers and local unskilled workers. Far from simply reflecting existing social inequalities, the labour market has been actively involved in their creation, and its control has caused growing tensions in the Congolese copperbelt region. Although largely neglected in the literature on extractive industries, processes of labour market segmentation are key to making sense of the impacts of mining investments on the shape of societies in the global South.     

La dynamique spatiale des marchés locaux de l'emploi au sein du champ métropolitain de Québec, 1981–2001

Spatial Dynamics of Local Labour Markets in the Québec City Metropolitan Field, 1981–2001
This research analyzes the spatial dynamics (from 1981 to 2001) of local labour markets at an infra-regional scale, namely the Québec metropolitan field, with particular emphasis on interactions between the metropolitan region and its hinterland. It seeks to better understand the factors underlying this evolution. Centrographic analyses were performed to characterize the evolution of the spatial configuration of local labour markets (displacement of gravity centre, shape change, evolution of dispersion indices and of workforce preferential distribution axes). Between 1981 and 2001, almost all employment poles experienced an increase in the mean-distance tied to their recruitment area, that being particularly true for peri-metropolitan poles which employ an increasing part of their workforce inside the metropolitan labour basin, where a more qualified and diversified labour force is available; thus, giving rise to significant reverse commuting. In addition to the influence of distance to metropolitan area, a multiple regression model shows that factors such as manufacturing specialization and employment growth within job centres also play a crucial role in the spatial dynamics of local labour markets in the Québec City metropolitan field.     

Making labour mobile: Borders,precarity, and the competitive state in Finnish migration politics

This article explores how the multiplication of labour migration categories relies upon strategic territorialisations of borders to differentiate between workers' nationalities, worksites, and skills in Finland. We argue that for certain categories of workers, migration policies encourage workers to become mobile in ways that make them more precarious. We analyse worksites that show the different ways that labour is made mobile: the internationalization of higher education; Finnair's labour outsourcing and offshoring practices; and the recruitment of forest berry-pickers from Thailand. We first trace contentious migration politics in Finland, revealing conflicts over labour protections, universal labour rights, the state's obligations to create employment, economic competitiveness, national identity, and the precarisation of work. We show how practices of legal, procedural, and spatial differentiation particularise the conditions of work and argue that, even for skilled workers, the strategic territorialisation of borders works to differentiate between workers and work sites. This differentiation works to make labour mobile in multiple ways and, due to the selective territorialisation of labour protections, the political geographies of migration in Finland tend towards the precarisation of labour for skilled and unskilled workers alike.