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In Search of the Global Labour Market – Actors, Institutions, and Policies

Thursday, 14 July 2016: 14:15-15:45
Location: Hörsaal III (Neues Institutsgebäude (NIG))
RC02 Economy and Society (host committee)

Language: English

“Globalization” has been the catch phrase dominating public as well as scholarly debates in the sociology on important political, economic, and social changes witnessed on national as well as global levels within the past two decades. Interestingly, however, “global labour markets” have not figured under the much debated topics and have rarely been systematically investigated in the social sciences. While on the one hand global labour markets are often treated as a given in the media and by economic actors, and also sometimes by academic scholars, on the other hand, research that put global labour markets in the center of their focus is rather scarce. Hence, it is not clear if there is such a thing as a global labour market at all, what would count as global labour market and with what categories it could best be analyzed. 
The proposed session, therefore, aims at advancing a sociological understanding of global labour markets beyond economic models and at conceptualizing global labour markets in a way that makes it possible to grasp the diverse processes of transnationalization of work and labour markets. Session contributions should address one or more of the following topics:

  • Theoretical reflections on possible ways of conceptualizing global labour markets in a sociological perspective;
  • Methodological and methodical reflections on possible ways to empirically investigate global labour markets;
  • Empirical descriptions of specific global labour markets;
  • Global/Transnational work regulation and regulating agencies;
  • Cross-border mobility and mobility regimes;
  • Labour market makers.
Session Organizer:
Ursula MENSE-PETERMANN, University of Bielefeld, Germany
Chair:
Ursula MENSE-PETERMANN, Bielefeld University, Germany
Posters:
Market Making in Inter-Regional Comparison: Cross-Border Temporary Agency Employment in Europe and East Asia
Karen SHIRE, Institute of Sociology, Germany; Hannelore MOTTWEILER, Institute of Sociology, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany; Chih-Chieh WANG, Institute of Sociology, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany
A Transnational Approach to Work: Methodological Issues
Benedicte ZIMMERMANN, EHESS Paris, France
The Social Construction of Global Value Chains; A Case in Pharmaceuticals
Graham HOLLINSHEAD, University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
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