IREC Conference "Transnational Labour Markets and Industrial Relations" at Bielefeld University / ZiF, 2nd – 4th September 2019, organized by Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (London), Richard Hyman (London) and Ursula Mense-Petermann (Bielefeld).
Today’s globalized capitalism is not only characterized by mobile
capital, global value chains, and a global financial system, but more
and more also by cross-border labour mobility and emergent transnational
labour markets. Transnational labour markets can be observed for labour
at all different skill levels: from academics and medical doctors, care
and construction workers, to domestic workers. They are also not
confined to legal employment based on employment contracts, but can also
be observed for all kinds of bonded and trafficked labour. The 2019 IREC Conference will discuss the emergence of transnational
labour markets as a multi-layered phenomenon. Special emphasis will be
put on the questions about whether and to what extent the institutions
governing the employer-employee relationship have become transnational
in response to capital and labour mobility, how transnational employment
relations are embedded at multiple-levels of governance, extending from
the national to the world regional, international and global level. These questions will be discussed by 22 international scholars within 7 different panels.
