A New Global Labour Studies?

The rapid growth of a new labour studies presents us with a paradox: in a context where the traditional labour movement is in decline, labour studies is thriving. What this new labour studies is identifying are the initiatives, organisational forms and sources of power that are emerging at the periphery of traditional labour. There is a “growing interest in a new political subject of labour… women, immigrants, people of colour, low-paid service workers, precarious workers… Groups that have been historically excluded from the moral and material boundaries of union membership… Rather than traditional scholarship on industrial relations, new labour scholars are exploring transformations occurring at the periphery of mainstream labour movements”  (Jennifer Chun, ‘The Power of the Powerless’, 2012: 40).

In this paper we analyze the content, methodology and authors who contribute to this new global labour studies through an examination of the Global Labour Journal (GLJ). The GLJ was launched in 2010 as a scholarly response to the new forms of labour action, organization and ideas emerging in the age of globalization. It grew out of the activities of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Labour Movements (RC 44) which has been transformed over the past fifteen years into a truly global forum for the study of labour. Over the past four years the GLJ has begun to record and analyze the forms of action and organization that fall outside the traditional focus of labour studies to include labour linked organisations such as NGOs and community organizations. What emerges from our analysis is the growing focus of submissions on labour in India and China. An emerging theme is the growing informalisation of labour and its implications for traditional trade unionism.