Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn't. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. What Is Work? offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.

Consult this handy reference work when you need accurate, up to date information on subjects ranging from the effects of work on children's education to the use of child labor in Eastern Europe. From Dickensian exploitation of orphans to the after-school jobs of American students, child labor continues to generate controversy. Surveying working children from the Industrial Revolution to the present day, Child Labor takes the subject beyond the usual third world confines as it looks at traditional children's occupations, from chimney sweeps in Victorian Britain to child actors in TV commercials. A-Z entries are also arranged by category Numerous citations of contemporary books and studies

Examining the premise that the process of economic liberalization has had a significant impact on the labor markets of many countries, this contributed volume studies that impact in different countries and regions from both theoretical and applied perspectives. While recognizing that liberalization entails many elements, the book focuses on how structural adjustment policies have contributed to the overall development effort. The first four chapters analyze the relationship between economic liberalization and labor markets, and then investigate this relationship within broader regions, such as North-South, transition economies, and Africa. The remaining chapters provide case studies of Greece, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turkey.

All the country chapters treat political economy issues and related policy conclusions. Stressing the interrelationship between liberalization and labor markets, the chapters discuss the importance of institutional, political, and legal factors in considering the effects of liberalization policies on the structure of labor markets and its participants. The book is an important look at a previously unexplored area of economic analysis.

The authors investigate the phenomenon of highly skilled Chinese returnees and their impact on the development of the Chinese economy and society, and on the transformation of China into a key player on the global stage. They analyse the reasons why Chinese entrepreneurs choose to return to their native country and how their overseas experience shapes their attitude and behaviours. This study is solidly grounded on fresh data from online and offline surveys and on evidence collected in over 200 interviews of successful returnees entrepreneurs. These global Chinese returnees have contributed to the rise of Chinese economy into a global powerhouse and this continuing brain movement and circulation will have much more future implications and impact for China's exchange with outside world.

South Africa's current political upheavals are the most significant since the transition from apartheid. Its powerful trade unions are playing a central role, and the political direction they take will have huge significance for how we understand the role of labour movements in struggles for social justice in the twenty-first century.

Featuring new findings and fresh insights from an international roster of labor economists, including such eminent authors as Morley Gunderson, Harry Holzer, and Paul Ryan, this book delves into a uniquely wide range of high-profile labor issues affecting youth in the US, Canada, Europe, and Japan - from declining job, wage, and training prospects to workplace health hazards, immigration, union activism, and new policy strategies. This widely accessible introduction to the latest research in the area presents original empirical economic studies in an engaging style. All may find something of interest in the host of controversial topics of lively public debate that are covered, including: youth unemployment, earnings mobility, racial/ethnic and gender inequalities, training quality and access, job hazards, health insurance coverage, immigration, minimum wage laws, union organizing, and global economic competition. Young Workers in the Global Economy is written in a clear and accessible style for a broad readership ranging from scholars and college students to employers, unions, career counselors, human resource professionals, vocational trainers, policy analysts, government officials, immigration and health care activists, as well as to the wider public concerned about the future of youth career prospects.

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Family policy holds a particular status in the quest for a more equitable world as it intersects the rights of women, children, and workers. But despite local and global efforts and initiatives, the state of family policy in different areas of the world varies widely. Through a cross-section of countries on six continents, Family Policies Across the Globe offers the current state of the laws concerning family life, structure, and services, providing historical, cultural, and socioeconomic context. Lucidly written chapters analyze key aspects of family definition, marriage, child well-being, work/family balance, and family assistance, reviewing underlying social issues and controversies as they exist in each country. Details of challenges to implementation and methods of evaluating policy outcomes bring practical realities into sharp focus, and each chapter concludes with recommendations for improvement at the research, service, and governmental levels. The result is an important comparative look at how governments support families, and how societies perceive themselves as they evolve. Among the issues covered: Sierra Leone: toward sustainable family policies. Russia: folkways versus state-ways. Japan: policy responses to a declining population. Australia: reform, revolutions, and lingering effects. Canada: a patchwork policy. Colombia: a focus on policies for vulnerable families. Researchers , professors and graduate students in the fields of social policy, child and family studies, psychology, sociology, and social work will find in Family Policies Across the Globe a reference that will grow in importance as world events continue to develop.

This volume is divided into five parts, each one including two chapters. Part I is devoted to 'Information Theory and Segregation Measurement', part II to 'The Gini Index and the Measurement of Segregation', part III to 'Measuring Segregation with Ordered Categories', part IV to 'Exploring Changes in Segregation' and part V to 'Wage Inequality and Segregation'. Let us now review into more details each of these ten chapters.

"This volume is one of the first books to consider the impact of tripartism across the developing world. It covers 8 case studies from Afrcia, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, focusing on developments since the 1990s. These studies show that tripartism has the effect of reducing the social impact of neo-liberal economics reforms"--Provided by publisher.

How do changes at home, in the labor market and on the job affect worker well-being? This volume of Research in Labor Economics contains eight original and insightful articles answering this question. Seven deal with demographic and labor market change, and one deals with wage differences essentially at a point in time. Of the seven, two articles analyze changes in family related matters and have implications regarding labor supply; two examine legislative changes, one of which has implications on teenage employment, and the other on informal business formation; one looks at potential productivity changes on farms in a developing country and has implications for remaining on the family farm or going to work; one models wage growth and shows why wages sometimes fall as one remains in a job longer; and finally, one investigates new enterprise formation over time.

This volume is the second book based on comparative and comprehensive data from the 2003 representative European Union Company survey of Operating hours, Working times and Employment (EUCOWE) in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. The EUCOWE project is the first representative and standardised European company survey which covers all categories of firm sizes and all sectors of the economy. This volume complements and builds on the first book published in 2007, in which the methodology and the descriptive national findings as well as some first comparative analytical results were presented. In this second book the EUCOWE research team presents in-depth cross-country analyses of the relationship between operating hours, working times and employment in the European Union. Six empirical chapters of this volume provide detailed comparative analyses of the determinants and consequences of the duration and flexibility of opening hours and operating times.

A worsening economic crisis due to the shift in wealth over the past decade is the central concern of this carefully documented study. It profiles the current status of income inequality in the United States and discerns disturbing trends for the future. A wealth of data are collected, evaluated, and simplified into a straightforward look at both the economic changes brought on by misguided reforms of the 1980s and a proposed system for measuring income inequality which may help clarify the issues pertinent to the debate.

Folke Dovring perceives the current U.S. economy as an imminent threat to our democratic system, and urges increased awareness of the variables which will effect its return to a healthy state of balance where income inequality, necessary to a certain degree, sustains productivity and individual incentives. A general overview of the facts and problems associated with income distribution, viewed from historical, geographical, and sociological perspectives, establishes the study's priorities, and is followed by the development of criteria which can more accurately estimate the nature and extent of income inequality, moving the study closer to recommendations for systematic public policy which may promote continued economic growth. The urgency with which Dovring addresses this topic and the thoroughness of his presentation will compel scholars and policymakers, especially those interested in poverty economics, to give immediate attention to the issue of economic inequality through informed, meaningful discussion.

This book is about how much people earn and why the distribution of earnings has been changing over time. The gap between the top and bottom in the United States has widened significantly since 1980. Why has this happened? Is it due to new technologies? What is the role of globalisation? Are there historical precedents?
The book begins with the "race" between technology and education, and shows that continuing technical progress does not necessarily imply a continuing rise in dispersion. It then examines the experience of 20 OECD countries over the twentieth century, material presented in the form of 20 country case studies. The book breaks new ground in assembling data on the distribution of individual earnings covering much of the twentieth century and drawing on a variety of under-exploited sources.
The findings overturn a number of widely-held beliefs. It is not the earnings of the low paid that have been most affected by the recent changes; widening is largely due to what is happening at the top. The recent rise in earnings dispersion is not unprecedented, but should be seen as part of a longer-run history of successive compression and expansion of earnings differences.

Transition economies offer a test case for concepts and theories, for broader ideas and for the methods of scientific enquiry, but also for the multiplicity of ideological interpretations. Designing the strategies for the transition processes and testing the theories relative to economic, social and political change constitute an unprecedented challenge to intellectual capacity of the scientific community. This volume brings together a team of leading international economists to address the major issues of transformation, institutional design, the redistribution paradigm and the macroeconomic decisions to be made.

More than twenty million migrant workers send $40 billion to their countries of origin each year, making labor second only to oil as the most important commodity traded internationally. The essays contained here deal with this unsettled sociopolitical issue--international labor migration and its relationship to economic development--seeking to determine the effects of recruitment, remittances, and return migration on labor-exporting countries. Many analysts, sending-country governments, employers, and migrant workers feel that countries with unemployed workers should, if possible, export them to countries with labor shortages. Remittances from migrants and returning workers who were trained abroad should stimulate economic growth enough to reduce unemployment and pressures to emigrate. It was projected that within a decade or less, labor-importing countries would emerge from the labor-shortage phase of their development. However, migrant workers have become a structural feature of the economies in Western Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, and the United States: emigration does not promote development in the sending countries. This collection of twelve chapters by experts in the field examines the conceptual and theoretical issues in international labor migration and looks at the relationship between migration and development in Africa, between Mediterranean countries and Europe, between Asian labor exporters and Middle Eastern importers, and the effects of emigration on Latin America and the Caribbean.

In addition to comprehensive introductory and concluding sections, Conceptual and Theoretical Issues in International Labor Migration and The Unsettled Relationship between Migration and Development, the volume is divided into four additional sections that scrutinize labor migration and development in Africa, Greece, and Turkey, Asian countries, and Latin America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. The book's recurring theme states that there is no iron law of migration-induced development: recruitment, remittances, and returns do not automatically generate stay-at-home development. This first thorough and comparative treatment, with its focus on the population, social policy, labor market, language, and foreign policy implications of recent and present policies, will be invaluable for courses on refugees and migrants in sociology and comparative public policy. Research libraries and international assistance organizations will find it an indispensable resource.

The Emergence of Modern South Africa views economic conflict, specifically the interaction of the state, big business, and labor, as the central issue in the development of South Africa. Yudelman focuses on the labor-management conflict in the country's gold fields in the early decades of this century, a time and place critical to the development of the state. At that time government walked a tightrope between supporting big business (to ensure economic growth) and appeasing the workers (to remain in power). Yudelman demonstrates how a symbiotic alliance between the mining companies and the state successfully subjugated the workers, and points out that this unique relationship continues to this day, dominating every aspect of life in South Africa. David Yudelman's historical analysis and lengthy epilogue on the 1970s and 1980s shed light on today's economic unrest and those conflicts to come. His book also shows how the South African case provides early and important insights into the development of the state-business symbiosis in industrial societies everywhere.

Scholars in the fields of economics, sociology, psychology, and management assess the theorectical and empirical literature on productivity and present conclusions that should stimulate further research.

This book provides a systematic examination of the relationship between industrial clusters and poverty, which is analyzed using a multidimensional framework. It examines the often-neglected concept of social protection as a means of mitigating the risks and vulnerabilities faced by workers and citizens in poor countries. By analyzing the case of the Otigba Information and Communications Technology cluster in Lagos, Nigeria, the author shows under which conditions firms in productive clusters can pass on benefits to workers in ways that improve their living standards in the wider socio-economic and spatial context of the region. The results presented provide substantial evidence of opportunities for economic development, helping planners to explore different avenues for integrating firm-driven social protection into social policy.

Toward a Future Beyond Employment proposes that as poor nations move to the emerging stage and as emerging economies become advanced, advanced economies are transitioning to a stage of their own, to a type of post-employment economy where society works less, consumes less, but instead has more time.

As our digital economy continues to expand, gig work becomes increasingly significant. This incisive book investigates the ways in which social dialogue can reinforce decent working practices and create inclusive workplaces in the growing gig economy, putting forward a framework for structured dialogue and collective bargaining among social partners, platforms, and workers. Centred on four major case studies - Germany, Greece, Switzerland, and the UK - the book analyses the key challenges that characterise the varied European landscape of gig economies and workforces. With a particular focus on the hospitality, driving, and food delivery sectors, chapters explore the intersection of social partners' responses and gig workers' capacity to organise and build collective voice. Examining the complicated and overlapping linkages between workers' rights, social protection, social dialogue, and decent work, the book aims to expose, and ultimately put an end to, precariousness and exploitation in the context of gig labour. Integrating critical theoretical perspectives and methodologies with context-sensitive evidence, this book will be an essential resource for students and scholars of sociology, social policy, labour policy, employment relations, and human resource management. Its examination of timely questions of collective action and social dialogue in the gig economy will also appeal to activists, journalists, social partners, and policymakers.

Labour: A Heterodox Approach provides a theoretical reconstruction of the labour and job market by examining it in a rich historical context. It explores the fundamental implications of the theories of consumption and growth and aims at solving the difficulties raised by the dominant economic theories (neoclassical, Keynesian, supply side) by taking into account the dimension of the historical conflict of the labour market and the public intervention that results from it, such as the construction of a specific legal framework that is to say, labour law. The work focuses on providing a description of conflict and intervention, the market's leading characteristics, and demonstrates that they can be interpreted by introducing two major remedial hypotheses in economic fundamentals. It also contributes to solving several theoretical controversies and highlights the two main perspectives on the economic regulation of the labour market.

Moving Towards the Virtual Workplace provides the first comprehensive overview of the many impacts of telework/telecommuting adoption, from both a managerial and societal perspective. This book argues that telework will be increasingly adopted in the twenty-first century, representing a far-reaching move toward the virtual workplace, with dramatic implications for the management of the workforce and for society at large. Telework, like mass production, has the potential to change society. It permits the significant reduction of the spatial and temporal constraints faced by the conventional organization of the workplace. The new virtual workplace constitutes a key step in the evolution towards a virtual society. In order to realistically assess telework's diffusion potential, the book studies, both conceptually and empirically, the technological, institutional, organizational and individual-level parameters that influence the decision to adopt telework, and the likelihood of telework's success. The book concludes that telework can have enormous socioeconomic impacts, both as a macro-level tool, reducing road transport externalities, and as a managerial instrument to motivate highly skilled workers in knowledge-based industries. As such this fascinating book will be invaluable to scholars of management, transport, economics and industrial and union relations. The telework and business community, both scholarly and practical will also find the book of great interest.

In August 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) called an illegal strike. The new president, Ronald Reagan, fired the strikers, establishing a reputation for both decisiveness and hostility to organized labor. As Joseph A. McCartin writes, the strike was the culmination of two decades of escalating conflict between controllers and the government that stemmed from the high-pressure nature of the job and the controllers' inability to negotiate with their employer over vital issues. PATCO's fall not only ushered in a long period of labor decline; it also served as a harbinger of the campaign against public sector unions that now roils American politics.
Now available in paperback, Collision Course sets the strike within a vivid panorama of the rise of the world's busiest air-traffic control system. It begins with an arresting account of the 1960 midair collision over New York that cost 134 lives and exposed the weaknesses of an overburdened system. Through the stories of controllers like Mike Rock and Jack Maher, who were galvanized into action by that disaster and went on to found PATCO, it describes the efforts of those who sought to make the airways safer and fought to win a secure place in the American middle class. It climaxes with the story of Reagan and the controllers, who surprisingly endorsed the Republican on the promise that he would address their grievances. That brief, fateful alliance triggered devastating miscalculations that changed America, forging patterns that still govern the nation's labor politics.
Written with an eye for detail and a grasp of the vast consequences of the PATCO conflict for both air travel and America's working class, Collision Course is a stunning achievement.

This volume contains thirteen new and original chapters on topics relating to worker well-being. It deals directly with how economic institutions affect individual and family earnings distributions. Topics covered include job training, worker and firm mobility, unions, collective bargaining, minimum wages, unemployment insurance and schooling. Among the questions answered are: To what extent do greater work hours of women mitigate the widening of the family earnings distribution? To what extent does the decline in unionization widen the distribution of earnings? To what extent do computers expand the earnings distribution? To what extent does the Russian wage distribution change if one accounted for wage arrears? To what extent does business relocation bring about job creation and job destruction? To what extent does maternal education increase childrens education? To what extent do job skills matter for low-income workers? And finally, why do minimum wage increases often fail to lead to increases in unemployment?
*Thirteen new and original chapters containing research on aspects of worker well-being.
*Includes job training, worker and firm mobility, unions, collective bargaining, minimum wages, unemployment insurance and schooling.
*Each chapter written by experts in the field.