Migration - both within and between countries - is increasingly one of the world's most important policy issues. The faster the Indian economy grows, the larger will be the geographical redistribution of the workforce from localities of low to those of high employment growth. Thus, territorial mobility is fundamental both to realizing the full economic potential of India's people and to allowing the population to escape from rural poverty. The book analyses the decisive factors in labour migration. Based upon a thorough and robust examination of migrants to three slum localities of Delhi stretching over four decades, the author examines why people migrate, the circumstances of their decision and their experience at their destination. He investigates the myths of urban policy - that "rural development" will reduce migration to the cities, that "growth poles" can be created to divert migrant flows, and that government has the power to influence significantly migration scales and directions while pursuing essentially unpredictable market-driven economic growth. Testing the essential theoretical basis for urban policy in India, the book is of interest to academics studying migration of labour and urbanization, and those interested in South Asian Studies.

Outlining important policy requirements for Bangladesh to become an upper middle-income country, the book presents research work conducted during the project "Changing Labor Markets in Bangladesh: Understanding Dynamics in Relation to Economic Growth and Poverty," sponsored by the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada. Bangladesh has experienced remarkable economic growth rates over the last decade. The country has recently been upgraded from a low-income country (LIC) to a lower-middle-income country (LMIC) as per the World Bank's classification system. By 2024, the country also aspires to graduate from the United Nation's list of least developed countries (LDC). The 7th five-year plan sets an ambitious target of 8 percent growth in GDP by 2020. There are also steep development targets to be achieved under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. All these will require an enormous leap forward from the current level of economic growth rate and sustaining it in the future. The situation also calls for considerable structural change in the economy, facilitating large-scale economic diversification. Rapid expansion of labor-intensive and high-productivity sectors, both in the farm and nonfarm sectors, is thus crucial for Bangladesh. Further, this should take place in conjunction with interventions to enhance productivity, jobs and incomes in traditional and informal activities where there are large pools of surplus labor. Given its relevance for Bangladesh and applicability to many other developing countries, the book offers a unique and pioneering resource for researchers, industry watchers as well as policy makers.

By assessing the transition in enterprise-employee relations in China over the six decades since the founding of the nation and the three decades since the implementation of a reform and opening up policy, this book investigates these changes from three key perspectives: occupation, operation and governance. The book chiefly analyzes the unit system structure of enterprises and mechanisms such as apprentice systems inside organizations and proposes a combination of systematic governance and civic governance. Further, it investigates in detail the transition in labor relations in township, state-owned and private enterprises under the contract system, market system and project system, reviews the factors contributing to contradictions in labor relations at different periods, and puts forward options for modifying labor relations in various ways, including their system and structure.

From the contributors to The Conversation, this collection of essays by leading experts in biotechnology provides foundational knowledge on a range of topics, from CRISPR gene sequencing to the ethics of GMOs and "designer babies." In The Conversation on Biotechnology, editor Marc Zimmer collects essays from The Conversation U.S. by top scholars and experts in the field, who present a primer on the latest biotechnology research, the overwhelming possibilities it offers, and the risks of its abuse. From an overview of CRISPR technology and gene editing in GMOs to the ethical questions surrounding "designer babies" and other applications of biotechnology in humans, it highlights the major implications biotechnology will bring for health and society. Topics range from the spectacular use of light to fire individual neurons in the brain to making plant-based meats; from curbing diseases with genetically modified mosquitoes to looking back on 40 years of opinions on IVF babies. The Critical Conversations series collects essays from top scholars on timely topics, including water, biotechnology, gender diversity, gun culture, and more, originally published on the independent news site The Conversation U.S. Contributors: Nathan Ahlgren, Ivan Anishchenko, Trine Antonsen, Jennifer Barfield, Pedro Belda-Ferre, Ari Berkowitz, Adeline Boettcher, Jason Delbourne, Kevin Doxzen, Mo Ebrahimkhani, Eleanor Feingold, J. Benjamin Hurlbut, Cecile Janssens, Samira Kiani, Amanda Kowalczyk, Mariana Lamas, Andrew Lapworth, Rebecca Mackelprang, Kathleen Merrigan, Saman Naghieh, Sean Nee, Dimitri Perrin, Christopher Preston, Jason Rasgon, Penny Riggs, Jason Robert, Oliver Rogoyski, Gary Samore, Sahotra Sarkar, George E. Seidel, Patricia A. Stapleton, Craig W. Stevens, Paul B. Thompson, Christopher Tuggle, Vikramaditya G. Yadav, Marc Zimmer

This book investigates the success story of the fast fashion industry-mainly owned by Chinese migrants-in Prato, Italy. It outlines how Prato has become the center of a value chain stretching from suppliers in China and Turkey all the way to buyers in Europe. Despite this, a policy attacking Chinese entrepreneurship has been devised and implemented in Prato. This volume analyzes said policy against the crisis of Prato's textile industry. Based on the author's 15 years of fieldwork in Prato, the book sheds light on the entangled processes of city making and the restructuring processes linked to capital accumulation by tackling issues of governance, territory, migration, division of labor, labor mobility, housing, and human rights.

This provocative book makes the case that trade unions must intervene in economic restructuring in order to halt the erosion of job quality in today's economy. The author, who is a professor at the Kogod College of Business Administration at The American University in Washington, D.C., specializes in labor-management relations and the social responsibilities of business and has brought both of these disciplines into focus for this book. Jacobs forcefully argues that collective bargaining is not merely a means to determine wages and benefits, but is also a powerful social tool that can move the corporation toward more socially responsible and responsive forms. While American unions are currently very weak, their regeneration should be a matter of public concern.

Jacobs considers shopfloor organization, health-care delivery, and public education in the United States, as well as the process of democratization in Poland and South Africa, and explains how transformational bargaining by trade unions may promote favorable outcomes. The author explores the conventional wisdom in industrial relations theory and argues that business unionism, which focuses on bread and butter, is not an adequate model for American labor. Instead, unions can and must negotiate profound change in organizations. Unions can win bargains that preserve jobs, alter product lines, extend ownership, and redraw organizational boundaries. These possibilities are illuminated in case studies on such topics as auto manufacturing, public schools and Italian unionism.

In August 1914 the German labour movement did not oppose the decision to go to war, and workers responded with as much enthusiasm as other social strata: one of the most powerful labour movements in the world failed to live up to the ideal of class solidarity. The movement's relations with foreign workers, particularly Polish coal miners, in the Ruhr in the decades before the war foreshadowed this failure. The rural origins of the Polish migrants and their traditional Catholic religious beliefs led most observers, including their fellow workers as well as recent historians, to view them as obstacles to the labour movement and resistant to working-class consciousness. This study, based on extensive research in archives in Germany and Poland, documents a very different history - one in which Polish miners' militancy exceeded that of native miners, and whose relations with German workers were marked by both xenophobia and solidarity.

How can we be happier, healthier and more satisfied in life? This edited collection examines various dimensions of wellbeing among older people, including its measurement; social, environmental and economic determinants; and how research can be translated into policy to improve quality of life for older people. With an increasingly ageing population across countries and an increasing population of older adults, there is growing interest in improving older people's ability to live healthily and happily. With a focus on retirement and aged care, this book is important reading for those interested in Welfare Economics, Health Economics and Development.

An empirical account of one of India's largest indigenous populations, this book tells the story of the Gonds-who currently face displacement and governmental control of the region's forests, which has crippled their economy. Rather than protesting and calling for state intervention, the Gonds have turned toward an informal economy: they not only engage with flexible forms of work, but also bargain for higher wages and experience agency and autonomy. Smita Yadav conceives of this withdrawal from the state in favour of precarious forms of work as an expression of anarchy by this marginalized population. Even as she provides rich detail of the Gonds' unusual working lives, which integrate work, labour, and debt practices with ideologies of family and society, Yadav illustrates the strength required to maintain dignity when a welfare state has failed.

In the decades after World War II, inflation undermined the aspiration for full employment in Australia. This book tells the story of how the Australian state was shaped by the confrontation with monetary instability: a pre-history of neoliberalism.

This book provides a political, economic, and sociological investigation of how neoliberalism shapes 'working class capacities,' or the power of the working class to organize and struggle for its collective interests. Efe Can Gurcan and Berk Mete discuss the global importance of the labor question as it pertains to Turkey. They apply the main theoretical framework of the combined and uneven development of class capacities to Turkish trade unionism. They also address Turkey's recent history of neoliberalization and its repercussions for class capacities, as mediated by national regulations, conservative unionism, and Islamic social assistance networks. Finally, the authors explore how neoliberalism generates intra-class fragmentation through public regulatory mechanisms and cultural differentiation in the sphere of social unionism.

This book explores the politics behind "de-liberalization", defined as policy reforms that constrain markets and their underlying mechanisms. By offering a comparative study on the governmental reform strategies and policy choices of Austria, Germany and Switzerland, it demonstrates that de-liberalization processes are a common reform option for governments. Utilizing a novel dataset on liberalization covering policy reform trajectories in 38 industrialized countries between 1973 and 2013, it shows that governments often draw on strategies of de-liberalization in the fields of social, welfare and labor market policy, where they can be used as compensation for the electorate in the context of liberalizing reforms. As such, the book makes an important contribution to the field of political economy by capturing the turning of the tide in scholarly and policy attention, away from liberalization and towards a re-embedding and re-regulation of economic activity.

Employment security is under pressure in public and private sectors because of fluctuating economic conditions and unstable markets. According to Loseby, the proponents of employment security have been lacking in substantive evidence justifying its existence. The majority of big business explicitly displays its disbelief in the practice through employee lay-off at first sign of economic adversity. Lay-offs are shown to create and prolong a number of socio-economic problems for society. Lack of employment affects personal ego, personal and family stress, and self-identity, as well as financial and economic factors associated with basic needs and success. The analyses of data provides focus on intangible and difficult-to-identify criteria such as employee morale and company loyalty. Productivity and financial ratios are also identified, analyzed, and compared. The author continues to review recommended and widely used strategies. Strengths and weaknesses are analyzed and compared, and successful national and global application of strategies are cited. The evolving corporation of the twenty-first century is reviewed to discern its needs, and to determine applicability of employment security to public or private enterprise. The book will be of interest to executives and all levels of management, human resource executives and personnel staff, in addition to professors of management and their students.

Wages are the main determinant of living standards for the vast majority of workers and families around the world. This manual describes a new methodology to measure what constitutes a decent but basic standard of living and how much workers need to earn to afford this, making it possible for researchers to estimate comparable living wages around the world and determine gaps between living wages and prevailing wages. The new, practical methodology in this manual draws on 10 years of research and experience to clearly explain each step in the estimation process, based on standards for a low cost nutritious diet, healthy housing, and all other needs including decent health care and children's education. It stresses transparency and the need for time and place specific living wage estimates, and is replete with examples from country studies that have put it to the test. The authors describe how living wages can be estimated in locations and countries where secondary data are limited and make new, practical recommendations on how to value in kind benefits as partial payment of a living wage. An essential tool for Researchers and NGOs interested in wages, poverty, living standards, and corporate social responsibility issues, this manual will also serve company professionals responsible for corporate social responsibility and human resources. It is also an excellent tool for Bank governments and unions, and international organizations such as the United Nations, UNDP, ILO and World Bank involved in setting minimum wages, poverty alleviation programs and trade policies.

The aging and migration megatrends and their impact on spatial - regional and local - labor market performance is the core theme of this book, and thus together define its scope and focus. The contributions provide an overview of key aging and migration issues in various countries together with analyses of their varied impacts on regional labor markets. Systematic database research and related empirical analyses are used to map out the complex and dynamic nature of these trends, while cutting-edge economic and modeling techniques are used to analyze them. In closing, the book critically reviews and assesses selected policy measures designed to cope with the effects of aging and migration on regional labor markets.

This study focuses on the job evaluation procedures used in the federal government to evaluate all white-collar non-supervisory occupations. It examines the factor and factor weighing methodologies developed by the Civil Service Commission to provide the basis for institutionalized standards used to establish existing pay differences. The Factor Evaluation System (FES) appears responsive to recommendations of comparable worth advocates that the criteria for determining job worth be made explicit and as bias-free as possible. The volume provides an extensive analysis of the new FES in an effort to determine fully its usefulness from the standpoint of such advocacy. The study addresses whether the new FES is more beneficial to female-dominated jobs than the old narrative classification system. Female-dominated jobs, it is discovered, were rated lower on all factors used in the federal government's job evaluation system. Dr. Werwie then goes on to explore why this was the case and whether changing the weights assigned to job factors under the new system would alter the pay relationship between male-and female-dominated jobs. Also examined is the extent to which the factors, dimensions and operational indicators of the FES and other evaluation systems adequately define and measure the job content of female-dominate occupations. The results provide insights which will be useful to administrators and researchers interested in moving current job evaluation systems closer toward the goal of a bias-free evaluation system.

Traces labor migration of women from Eastern Caribbean to oil-producing countries such as Venezuela, Trinidad, Curaðcao, and especially Aruba. Discusses women's participation in the labor force, gender relations, domestic service, the social and economic position of the migrants, and motherhood. Argues that US investments are an important factor in the migration of Caribbean women"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.

Allison Zippay charts the decline of displaced blue-collar workers, part of the fallout of the past decade's dramatic economic shift from manufacturing to an expanded, service-based economy. She challenges the widely held assumption that these workers have been absorbed into the post-industrial economy and raises questions regarding the real nature of their occupational transition. Actually a case study of the Shenango Valley in western Pennsylvania, where an estimated 6,600 jobs were lost due to plant closings, From Middle Income to Poor is unique in its coverage of the vital issue of economic dislocation. Zeroing in on long-term unemployment and income loss, Zippay finds that many of the displaced workers remain unemployed or underemployed and have slipped in status from middle-income to poor. The volume uses data gathered from interviews to explore how persons with a history of steady blue-collar employment have coped with economic dislocation and downward lifestyle shifts, and in the process presents a path-breaking community portrait of industrial displacement. Early chapters focus on blue-collar workers in the 1980s and the economic and social dimensions of the manufacturing decline. They describe the Shenango Valley community setting, mill work, mill workers, and how the lifestyles of the local residents have been shaped by long-standing blue collar traditions. Later chapters investigate the changes in income and employment that prompted a downward slide and examine the processes of rebuilding. Chapter Seven cites incidences of depression and other emotional distress as well as changes in perception of self and community. The final chapter discusses the implications of thefindings and recommends actions that could improve the displaced workers' social and economic well-being. Sociologists, policy analysts, social workers, and those in the fields of labor relations, social welfare, and social economics will find that this intense scrutiny of the Shenango Valley has far-reaching implications for the national economy in the 1990s and beyond.

This book provides a systemic and detailed monographic study of Chinese outbound migration. It not only breaks down the basic trends of this migration with respect to destinations and the like, but also analyzes its unique features, which include the largely middle- and upper-class makeup of emigrants and their investment activities overseas, particularly when it comes to buying property. The Chinese are the largest foreign buyers of real estate in the US, Canada and Australia. By explaining this and other special aspects of Chinese emigration and their impact on China and receiving countries, this book provides a fresh and interesting look at this important phenomenon.

This Handbook incorporates a variety of disciplines and approaches in order to provide a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the issues that result from increasing age diversity at work. Despite interest in this area exploding over the past few years amongst academics, practitioners and policy makers, the analysis of age diversity has remained primarily within disciplinary 'silos' such as Psychology or Sociology with a focus on ageing or generational differences, rather than a combination of approaches to understanding age diversity. Unique in its coverage of multiple perspectives, it considers not only generational and ageing perspectives to age diversity, but also highlights the importance of context in driving both the impact and response to this issue. The Palgrave Handbook of Age Diversity and Work includes contributions from leading scholars in age and generational diversity from across the world, discussing cutting-edge research findings about the nature and impact of age diversity and presenting approaches to managing this phenomenon.

This book provides a unique insight into negotiations around language investment for employability in the context of public employment services. Drawing on extensive ethnographical research carried out in Regional Employment Offices in Switzerland, the authors follow the stories of various job seekers. In doing so, they challenge the currently dominant assumption that investment in language competences leads to better employability. Arguing for a political economic perspective on these issues, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the connections between language and social inequality, as well as students and scholars of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics.

The issues discussed in this book are the building blocks needed for an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that will allow for value creation and reporting by the most important assets organizations have, its human capital.

In the digital age tasks are increasingly modularised and consumers are increasingly becoming prosumers. Replacing digital labour and prosumption within an American context and the wider political economy, this volume presents a critical account of the forces which shape contemporary subjects, networks, and labour practices.

This book explores the ways in which neoliberal capitalism has reshaped the lives of working-class men around the world. It focuses on the effects of employment change and of new forms of governmentality on men's experiences of both public and private life. The book presents a range of international studies-from the US, UK, and Australia to Western and Northern Europe, Russia, and Nigeria-that move beyond discourses positing a 'masculinity crisis' or pathologizing working-class men. Instead, the authors look at the active ways men have dealt with forms of economic and symbolic marginalization and the barriers they have faced in doing so. While the focus of the volume is employment change, it covers a range of topics from consumption and leisure to education and family.