301050 In Search of a Global Labor Market (S) (WiSe 2024/2025)

The term ‘global labour market’ is widely used when it comes to account for current social phenomena such as the ever closer integration of China or India with their huge labour forces into the world economy, or the off-shoring of specific operations of MNCs to countries with cheap labour forces. Further examples can be found in low-wage sectors such as meat packing, construction or logistics that have nearly completely come to depend on migrant labour.

In most of the cases, global labour markets are taken for granted by the media, consulting agencies and other economic actors, and sometimes also by academic scholars. At the same time, however, there has been very little research done on global labour markets as phenomena sui generis. In fact, the vast majority of labour market research today still applies a national frame of reference, and investigates specific national labour markets. It is, however, questionable if this common research focus is able to sufficiently account for current labour related phenomena in a globalizing world, such as those cited above.
• What is – in theoretical terms - a ‘global labour market’? And when is it possible to speak of a ‘global labour market’? Are there (more ‘modest’) conceptual alternatives to account for border-crossing labour market phenomena?
• Which theoretical categories, methodologies, and empirical methods can be used to investigate ‘global labour markets’?
• What can be said empirically, both in a synchronic and historical perspective, about ‘global labour markets, if they can be identified’?

These questions are addressed in the chapters of the edited volume “In Search of the Global Labour Market” (Mense-Petermann, Welskopp, and Zaharieva 2022, Brill), on the basis of which we will discuss the mentioned questions.

Requirements for participation, required level

A basic knowledge of economic sociology and/or the sociology of work is indispensable for a successful participation in this course. Therefore, participants should either have successfully completed an introductory course in economic sociology or the sociology of work, or have carefully read through an introductory book.

The following text books represent suitable introductions:

Grint, Keith; Nixon, Darren (2015): The sociology of work. 4th edition. Cambridge: Polity Press

Swedberg, Richard (2009). Principles of Economic Sociology. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvcm4g75