Shaping labour migration to Italy: the role of labour market institutions

This article critically examines the existing explanations for the initiation and perpetuation of labour migration to Italy between the 1970s and early 2000s and highlights the role of labour market institutions in shaping demand for migrant labour. It posits that the institutions governing the labour market in Italy have contributed to creating demand for migrant workers first by generating a significant amount of low-standard employment and second by producing massive obstacles and disincentives to the labour market participation of the domestic supply of labour.     

Post-industrial division of labour as a systemic barrier for immigrants in the Swedish labour market

Differences in labour force participation and unemployment rates between indigenous populations and immigrants are common throughout Europe, but the gap seems to be particularly wide in Sweden. Based on studies of workplaces that traditionally employed large numbers of immigrants, but where they are now declining, it is argued that a driving force behind this process of exclusion is to be found in technological and organisational changes. These changes seem to be more pervasive in the Swedish labour market than in other economies in Europe. What is sometimes called the ‘Swedish model of working life’ has turned into the systemic exclusion of immigrant labour.     

Reconceptualising local labour markets in the context of cross-border and transnational labour flows: The Irish example

The increased prevalence of border-crossing labour of various types makes an uneasy juxtaposition of the ‘local’ and the ‘transnational’ or the ‘global’ and raises two classes of questions. These concern, firstly, the definition of the local in local labour markets and, secondly, the role of state borders in regulating and shaping flows of border-crossing workers. The paper begins to explore these issues. It questions the conceptualisation and definition of local labour markets and outlines a case for transnational labour and state borders to be included in their theorisation. Following this, drawing on studies of recruitment and interviews with labour market actors on both sides of the Irish border it discusses how state borders impact on different types of labour in different circumstances and outlines the paradoxical and sometimes contradictory nature of state borders in labour regulation and employers' strategies. It concludes by arguing that state borders might be moved from the edge of local labour market studies to a place much nearer their centre.     

The travails of British labour

Neil Kinnock, Making our Way, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1986, pp.200. $ 13.95 (paper)

Roy Hattersley, Choose Freedom: The Future for Democratic Socialism, London, Michael Joseph, 1987, pp. 265. $39.95 (cloth)

John Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1987, pp. 249. $29.95 (paper)

Maureen Mackintosh and Hillary Wainwright (eds), A Taste of Power: The Politics of Local Economics, London, Verso, 1987, pp. 441. $29.95 (paper)

Peter Hain, Political Strikes: the State and Trade Unionism in Britain, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1986, pp. 357. $14.95 (paper)

Roger Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes: 1893 to 1985, London, Methuen, 1986, pp. 171. $19.95 (paper)

Derek Fatchett, Trade Unions and Politics in the 1980s: the 1984 Act and Political Funds, London, Croom Helm, 1987, pp. 135. $78.95 (cloth)

Michael P. Jackson, Strikes: Industrial Conflict in Britain, USA and Australia, Brighton, Wheatsheaf Books, 1987. pp. 232. $34.95 (paper)

Ken Coates and Tony Topham, Trade Unions and Politics, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1986, pp. 268. $17.95 (paper)

Andrew J. Taylor, The Trade Unions and the Labour Party, London, Croom Helm, 1987, pp. 320. £27.50 (cloth)     

International labour migration of Asian women

Chris Beyrer. War in the Blood: sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia. Bangkok: White Lotus Books; London and New York: Zed Books, 1998. £42.50, hardcover; £14.95, paper.

Christine B. N. Chin. In Service and Servitude: foreign Female Domestic Workers and the Malaysian “Modernity” Project. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. xxiv, 299 pp. US$20.50, paper.

Siriporn Skrobanek, Nataya Boonpakdee and Chutima Jantateero. The Traffic in Women: human Realities of the International Sex Trade. London and New York: Zed Books, 1997. vii, 124 pp. £32.95, hardcover.     

Belgian labour in World War II: Strategies of survival,organisations and labour relations

A system of collective bargaining at sector level emerged in Belgium after the First World War. The commissions paritaires, in which unions and employers were equally represented, became the centres of power of the pillarised Belgian trade union movement. This system of industrial relations was challenged during the general strike of 1936. Some employers tried to compete with the unions by creating factory councils, yellow unions and 'mutual societies' at company level. The strategic aim was to remove the centre of labour relations from sector to factory level. This tendency was reinforced during the Second World War. Pre-war trade unions were abolished, employers tried to take over the role of the unions by creating all kinds of social provisions at company level. The factory became a basic element of the survival strategy of the workers. Moreover, from 1941 a clandestine and more radical trade union movement, which opposed the pre-war pillarised trade unionism, emerged. These clandestine unions were organised at factory level. In their view, the factory and not the sector had to become the locus of industrial relations after the war. The organisational framework that was established between 1944 and 1952 was a synthesis of the pre-war model of industrial relations and newly established councils at company level.     

Gender,craft labour and the creative sector

This paper responds to a resurgence of interest in craft labour as an integral aspect of policy generation in the creative sector. It highlights the local, and industrial, cultural, and political histories and processes that create divisions and distinctions within craft economies. Drawing on research with designer makers in Birmingham Jewellery Quarter, the paper demonstrates how gender infuses the responses of policy actors in their regeneration plans for the local economy. It notes the significance of local meanings of craft and how this leads to misrecognition and devaluation. It also illustrates how the economic importance of designer makers is diminished within a policy environment that has had a long-standing focus on large-scale manufacturing. This leaves designer makers occupying a role that is predominantly focused on their symbolic and decorative value. This bodes ill for cultural policy reformulation that is based on the economic significance of flexible specialisation within small-scale, networked businesses.     

雇主团体与劳资关系——近代工商同业公会与劳资纠纷的处理

近代工商同业公会与工会都是劳资分立的产物,二者在组建之后均加强了各自阶级的组织整合,也使劳资关系更具有阶级政治的特点.不过,工商同业公会作为行业性的雇主组织,并非如一般所认为的与工人及其工会处于完全对立的位置,在政府的劳资处理机制、劳资合作之中也占有重要地位.     

The last days of the Melanesian labour trade in Western Samoa

Drake's Island of Thieves. Ethnological Sleuthing. By William A. Lessa. Honolulu, University Press of Hawaii, 1975. xviii, 289 pp. Maps, illus., bibliography. $US 12.00.

The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker from the Crimea to Vietnam. By phillip knightley. London, Andre Deutsch, 1975.465 pp, plates, notes on sources, bibliography and index. £5.95.

Not as a Duty Only: An Infantryman's War. By Henry ('JO') gullett. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1976. x, 169 pp, illustrations. $A 12.00.

Voyages to Hawaii before 1860. By Bernice Judd, enlarged and edited by Helen Yonge Lind. Honolulu, The University Press of Hawaii, 1974. xviii, 129 pp. Bibliography.     

Migration in a segmented labour market

"Current research in migration is moving on from neo-classical and behavioural perspectives to a more structural approach relating to wider processes, issues of power and the particular role of employers. Within this programme a key issue for investigation is the interaction between spatial mobility and the structuring of labour markets. This paper focuses on the significance of labour market segmentation--in terms both of job stability and gender--for migration, both theoretically and through an empirical analysis of data from the UK Labour Force Survey on sponsored and unsponsored moves."     

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.     

Determinants of temporary labour migration in southern India

We present new data from three village panchayats in northwest Tamil Nadu and investigate the associations between demographic and socioeconomic factors with temporary labour migration from this setting. Individual (n?=?1110) and household (n?=?278) level logistic regression models were used to demonstrate how factors at each of these levels can influence temporary labour migration trajectories. Young males were most likely to temporarily migrate for work from this region. Additionally, large households from historically disadvantaged castes with marginal land and housing were most likely to have at least one migrant member. Households with multiple migrant members appear to use temporary migration to cope with serious deprivation relative to households with only one migrant member. These findings provide a strong case that can be compared to other settings in India and can be used to inform improved policy and targeted development initiatives to support temporary migrant workers and their households.     

Migration,nursing, institutional discrimination and emotional/affective labour: ethnicity and labour stratification in the UK National Health Service

The UK has a long history of recruiting foreign nurses to meet labour shortages. This article explores the ways in which a combination of institutional discrimination in recruitment and promotion and daily interactions and practices in the workplace practices constructed migrant nurses as less skilled and inappropriately embodied and so restricted their overall career trajectories. Based on qualitative research with migrant nurses of Caribbean and Asian origins who came to the UK in the post-war era, we show how race and ethnicity were the basis of initial restrictions in training leading to permanent stratification in the nursing labour force. In the interactive and emotional labours of caring, foreign-born nurses are subjected to stereotypical and normative assumptions about their attributes and skills from colleagues, managers and patients that affect their opportunities to progress within the National Health Service. We thus combine an analysis of institutional discrimination with an understanding of cultural practices in the workplace to explain their disadvantaged position.