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Focusing on Australia, Canada and the USA, Edward Mohr analyses 40 recruiter regulations passed by subnational and local governments, finding that the laws predominantly rely, soley, on either migrant workers, labour recruiters or a government agency for enforcement. The book then examines 130 years of history from the industrial revolution to the modern era, analysing how governments in the three federations formed their relationships with the recruiters they depend upon to manage movement. By highlighting the critical role private-sector recruiters play in migrant movement, and spotlighting the challenges for governments in regulating them, this book makes a highly significant and urgently needed contribution to the field of migration governance.

Students and scholars of migration, public policy, international politics and sociology must read this book to enhance their understanding of global migration management. Policymakers, migration regulation experts and labour historians will also benefit from its comprehensive assessment of international recruitment regulation.

A comprehensive exploration of how labor unions, broadly conceived, shape party loyalties in the American mass public.

How and why do labor unions matter for American mass party loyalties, specifically party identification and vote choice? Labor Unions and American Mass Politics marshals a wide range of survey data to test two different ways through which labor unions can shape mass party loyalties. The first is via people's personal affiliation with organized labor, such as a current/former member or household resident, while the second is via people's attitudes toward organized labor, such as whether they favor vs. disfavor unions in general. Overall, author David Macdonald shows that both are capable of shaping mass support for the Democratic Party and its various political candidates and that such relationships are also conditioned by whether people perceive labor unions and Democrats to be political allies, a connection that is lacking among a sizeable minority of Americans. Overall, Macdonald provides not only a timely analysis of mass labor politics in the early twenty-first-century United States but also shows that labor unions are politically consequential, even after decades of decline.

On March 17, 2015, tens of thousands of Mexican farmworkers went on strike in San Quintin, Baja California, to protest horrible working conditions on the farms that produce most of the fresh fruits and vegetables you consume. Calling themselves the "slaves of the twenty-first century," these mostly Indigenous men, women, and children rose up in defiance of the conditions of modern slavery, forced labor, sexual harassment, and "hunger wages." This ethnography provides an in-depth look into how Indigenous farmworkers organize in the fields and their communities to improve wages and working conditions.

Since the strike, the farmworkers have organized a union to fight for justice in the fields. In this work, author James Daria accompanies these farmworkers as they struggle for dignity. Daria also charts the tensions inside the farmworker movement as women struggle to gain greater power in the home as well as at work. In an era of complex global integration, Daria shows us how what we eat is tied to the suffering of those who produce our food.

This book highlights and centers the Indigenous workers who struggle for justice in a global food system that connects us all.

The Great Disconnect: The Paradox of India's Economic Growth and Employment Crisis, examines the paradox of India's remarkable economic growth alongside persistent employment challenges, revealing the complex dynamics of what the author terms "the great disconnect" between development and suitable work opportunities.

Drawing on extensive research and policy experience, Professor K.P. Kannan explores how India's economic reforms have created a troubling divergence between GDP growth and quality employment generation. The book provides critical insights into jobless growth patterns, the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on workers, persistent wage inequalities, and the marginalisation of women and less-educated workers in rural areas. Through detailed analysis of employment elasticity, informal sector dynamics, and social security gaps, Kannan demonstrates how the majority of India's workforce remains trapped in precarious employment without basic protections. The study extends beyond national boundaries to examine similar challenges across the Global South, particularly within BRICS countries, whilst proposing strategies for organising informal workers and achieving inclusive development.

This authoritative work will be essential reading for development economists, labour specialists, policy makers, and researchers examining employment challenges in emerging economies in the Global South. It provides valuable insights for international development agencies, government officials, labour organisations, and academics studying the intersection of economic growth and social development in contemporary India and the broader developing world.

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

The early 2020s brought a torrent of disruptions - COVID-19, war-amplified inflation and migration blockages - that reshaped global labour in uneven and deeply unequal ways. Across the Global North and South, vulnerable workers faced deteriorating conditions, fractured livelihoods and growing distrust as chronic uncertainty was compounded by socio-economic and political shocks.

Moving beyond policy-driven models focused on human and social capital, this edited collection offers a variety of novel biographical and relational approaches to studying resilience that all centre on workers' lived experiences, histories and networks. Drawing on rich fieldwork across multiple countries, the authors show how past crises, care obligations and collective ties both enable resilience and generate new burdens.

Bridging biographical research methods, social reproduction theory and development studies, this book shows that resilience is a relational process shaped by inequality, gender, migration and labour struggle.

How sex workers and activists engage in non-capitalist care practices to manage precarity, stigma, and criminalization

In Sex Worker Solidarity, Lauren Levitt argues that because of their marginalized status, which makes them outsiders in legal, labor, medical, and social networks, sex workers inevitably care for one another in distinct ways that are outside of traditional material and emotional support structures. Through participant observation and interviews with sex workers and sex worker activists at the Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles (SWOP-LA) and Dungeon X, a large commercial dungeon in New York City, Levitt illustrates how sex workers create forms of value for one another that go beyond the value they create for bosses and clients, providing a model for broader social change in the face of increasing wealth inequality.

Drawing on Marxist and women of color feminisms and queer theory, Levitt reveals how sex workers' non-biological kinship structures enable them to circulate both material resources and knowledge according to a moral economy distinct from capitalism's economy of competition, cementing bonds between workers. Ultimately, Sex Worker Solidarity illustrates the limits and possibilities of extending the informal networks of care emerging in sex work workplaces to a broader group of people through sex worker organizing, and shows how other informal workers can resist capitalist exploitation through alternative forms of labor organizing.

Offering a powerful critique of contemporary visions of women's empowerment, this book traces the shift from its radical feminist roots to a market-driven model of inclusion.

Focusing on Southeast Asia, where women's labour has long underpinned economic growth, it examines how empowerment projects intersect with the privatization of development and the rise of gender expertise. Once a collective agenda to support women in exerting greater control over their lives, empowerment is now framed as integrating women into markets. Backed by donors, corporations and development institutions, this model has only persisted and expanded, despite extensive scholarship highlighting its limits.

Through extensive analysis of interventions, funders and the micropolitics of aid and corporate actors, the book demonstrates how gender programming can simultaneously disempower and create space for resistance.

This volume brings together established scholars and early-career researchers to foreground African contributions to labour studies. Spanning historical and contemporary developments, it examines youth employment, gendered labour, migration, informality, labour politics and emerging forms of work across the continent.

Through rich case studies and comparative analysis, contributors interrogate how concepts such as class, labour market segmentation, power resources and worker agency have been deployed and contested in African contexts. In doing so, the book demonstrates how African empirical realities invite a rethinking of labour studies and its theoretical foundations.

The Sage Handbook of Digital Labour is a comprehensive exploration of the multifaceted and evolving concept of digital labour. Originally coined in Marxist analyses to explain the exploitation of user data in the digital economy, the term has since expanded to encompass a wide range of paid work influenced by digital technologies. This includes traditional jobs transformed by platforms, new roles emerging in today's digital society, and cultural producers like influencers and online creators. The handbook also addresses the material aspects of digital labour, highlighting its dependence on traditional manufacturing and manual labour.

This volume brings together leading scholars from diverse disciplines to examine the intersections of labour and digital technologies. It approaches digital labour as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry, exploring the material and ideological conditions of work in contemporary society. The handbook aims to chart the extensive territory of digital labour studies, covering theoretical traditions, key concepts, emblematic sites of production, normative cultures, and worker subjectivities. It also showcases the spectrum of worker organizing repertoires and tactics across the world.

The handbook is organized into seven sections. Section 1 highlights major theoretical traditions, while Section 2 focuses on the material sites along production chains. Sections 3 and 4 delve into key concepts and sites of production, and Section 5 explores normative cultures and worker subjectivities. Section 6 examines worker organizing tactics, and Section 7 introduces research methods for scholars in the field. The volume concludes with discussions on how digital labour studies can provide unique perspectives to imagine digital futures.

The Sage Handbook of Digital Labour is an essential resource for scholars, practitioners, and students seeking to understand the complexities of digital labour. It provides a comprehensive and nuanced exploration of the field, equipping readers to engage with the theoretical and practical aspects of digital labour in a rapidly changing world.

Part 1: Theoretical Traditions
Part 2: Material Sites of Production
Part 3: Key Concepts in Digital Labour
Part 4: Emblematic Sites of Production
Part 5: Normative Cultures and Worker Subjectivities
Part 6: Worker Organizing Repertoires and Tactics
Part 7: Research Methods in Digital Labour Studies

Muslims face barriers in labour markets across Western democracies, but how severe are these penalties and do they vary by national or local context?

Comparing the latest census data across Muslim communities, majority populations and other religious minorities from the UK, Australia and Canada, Barriers of Belief reveals the stark patterns of inequality in hiring, unemployment, earnings and overqualification associated with Muslim identity. It exposes how inequality is compounded by race and gender, creating distinct disadvantages, particularly for Muslim women.

This book is essential, timely reading for policy makers, researchers and practitioners committed to understanding and dismantling labour market discrimination in diverse societies.

Can trade unions be reconceptualised as human rights organisations? This groundbreaking study explores the untapped potential of labour movements in human rights advocacy, drawing on extensive interviews with representatives of union confederations worldwide.

Evans provides both theoretical foundations and empirical evidence for viewing trade unions through a human rights lens, examining existing partnerships with NGOs and identifying opportunities for enhanced collaboration. Through detailed analysis of concrete political campaigns, this book reveals how union-based advocacy networks operate in practice.

Essential reading for scholars of labour relations, human rights and political advocacy, this innovative work opens new pathways for understanding and strengthening human rights movements globally.

Negotiating the Future focuses on US labor and the just transition. Fossil fuel workers are currently at risk for losing their jobs should the US curtail coal, natural gas and oil use. A just transition would support these workers and avoid imposing disproportionate shares of the costs of decarbonization on the poor, the working class, or people of color. While some unions are debating how a just low-carbon energy transition can be enacted, others are questioning whether a transition needs to take place at all.

Diane Sicotte provides a detailed understanding of the role of labor in environmental change, beyond the "jobs vs. environment" framing. Negotiating the Future also contributes to ongoing debates in labor studies: about the best ways for labor unions to address conflicts between their members' long-term interests in environmental stability and their short-term material interests; how far solidarity should go when it means abetting obstacles to lowering carbon emissions, and how to ensure that the developing renewable energy industries enhance labor unions' power resources instead of diminishing them.

The invisible relationship between the ultra-rich and their domestic workers

Behind the facades of luxurious Parisian buildings, the immense gates of chateaux, and the bay windows of vast villas on the Cote d'Azur, live the invisible workers who serve the ultra-wealthy of France. Housekeepers, butlers, maids and cleaners, laundresses, nannies, cooks, and chauffeurs work from morning to night-and often through the night-to satisfy the needs of the rich families who employ them. In Serving the Wealthy, Alizee Delpierre offers an inside view of this unlikely cohabitation.

Drawing on extensive immersive research, Delpierre calls the relationship between ultra-rich French employers and their domestic help "golden exploitation": workers see the potential for social advancement, and the wealthy will do anything to preserve their class privilege, enjoying the fruits of their capital while outsourcing daily drudgery to others. The need for round-the-clock serving, however, does not compel the rich to pay their domestic workers a fair wage; some earn less than minimum wage-and off-the-books gifts of designer handbags don't necessarily fill the gap. Most of these domestic workers are women, many of whom are immigrants, and Delpierre notes that it is considered perfectly normal for a wealthy employer to hire on the basis of ethnicity-to state explicitly a preference for Black and Arab maids, for example, or a distaste for Muslim workers.

The world inhabited by servants and their ultra-rich employers might seem archaic and absurd; but Delpierre's account sheds light not only on these particular power relations but also on the extreme inequality of our current era.

How race, class, gender, and place shape the ways working-class young people in Britain envision their transition from education to work

How do the effects of deindustrialisation and neoliberalism influence young people's perceptions of work and education? In Cancelled Futures, Amit Singh examines how experiences of class-based inequality work through race, place, and gender in different ways. Moving beyond the usual framing of race versus class and the populist fixation with the white working class, Singh shows the intractable challenges that Black, Asian, and white young people share when they envision their futures in changing labour market conditions. Drawing on extensive interviews with sixty-two young working-class Britons, he describes the range of strategies they employ in the absence of viable economic opportunities-and the uneven results that follow.

Singh offers a vivid nationwide portrait, bringing together seemingly divergent locations and their youth-those living in proximity to the extraordinary wealth and perceived opportunity of the City of London, in the former northern mill town of Rochdale, and in the forgotten seaside town of Morecambe Bay-and captures the empathetic sense of struggle that many cultivate. Singh reveals that although the unique features of place raise distinctive racial and gendered reckonings with their circumstances and hopes, these young people have in common an increasingly fading sense of the future. Singh shows that they do not cling to the illusion that hard work pays off or the myth of meritocracy, but seek only to realise some sense of dignity and meaning amid a future that feels not just confusing but altogether absent.

This book advances scholarship on the infrastructural turn in migration studies by foregrounding the underexplored role of migration brokers from receiving countries and catering to foreign professionals. While existing research has predominantly focused on brokerage in migrants' countries of origin, this monograph conceptualises migration brokerage in the host society as a key institutional infrastructure shaping contemporary cross-border labour markets. It conceptually contributes by integrating insights from economic sociology and international migration studies, introducing a transnational lens into the market-making framework.

Drawing on qualitative data from ethnographic fieldwork, the book examines the role of brokers not only in facilitating and regulating workers' mobility, but also in actively "making" an emerging cross-border labour market between Japan and Vietnam. It also provides a nuanced analysis of the experiences of skilled Vietnamese migrants as they navigate entry into and participation in Japan's labour market.

Focusing on Japan as an emerging immigration country, the analysis is situated within a context characterised by acute labour shortages alongside a persistently restrictive migration regime. Over the past decade, the number of foreign-particularly skilled-migrant workers, including Vietnamese nationals, has increased substantially. In the absence of a comprehensive immigration policy, private intermediaries have become crucial in facilitating, mobilising and controlling the mobility of both migrant workers and labour users. Despite Asia's importance as a major host region of international migrants, Japan remains comparatively under-researched. Addressing this gap, the book will appeal to scholars, students, and policymakers working in migration studies, economic sociology, Asian studies, and migration and labour policy.

This book explores the everyday lives of religious and spiritual sex workers in the United Kingdom and the United States. Challenging dominant assumptions that religiosity and sex work are inherently incompatible, it centres the voices of those whose experiences are routinely marginalised within dominant religious and secular discourse. Drawing on qualitative research, including participant-driven photographs, diaries, and in-depth interviews, the book examines how sex workers navigate belief, identity, stigma, intimacy, and belonging in their everyday lives. It reveals the complex ways religious and spiritual sex workers negotiate their occupational, religious, spiritual, familial, and personal identities, offering a nuanced account of lived religion and sex work. By focusing on micro-level experiences, the book moves beyond moral debates to illustrate how both religiosity and sex work are practised in ordinary moments and intimate spaces. In doing so, it challenges reductive portrayals of sex workers as either victims or sinners. Bridging sex work scholarship and the sociology of religion, this book will be of interest to academics, sex work support organisations, and policy makers seeking a more inclusive understanding of sex work and religiosity.

This book situates the transformation in the world of work and employment relations in Central Asia within broader and uneven processes of labour precarisation in the global political economy during the past decades. Contributions show how a region that has largely remained marginal to the discipline of political economy can inform the theorisation of labour precarity and its gender-differentiated dynamics in rural, urban, and migrant contexts in and beyond the post-socialist world. The chapter authors illustrate this through different case studies from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, using data gathered from several rounds of fieldwork up to 2025.

Chapter 1: Introduction: Rethinking Labour, Gender, and Precarity in Central Asia is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book offers a deeply grounded ethnographic account of the women coal workers in Jharia-known locally as Kamins-whose labor sustains one of India's most hazardous extractive frontiers. Moving beyond narratives of victimhood or romanticized resilience, the study situates their lives within the historical evolution of India's coal economy, from colonial expansion and post-independence nationalization to contemporary regimes of subcontracting, informalization, and ecological degradation. It reveals how women's apparent "disappearance" from formal mining work is not a simple retreat but the outcome of institutional reclassification, managerial practices, and gendered-caste hierarchies that reorganize labor, risk, and recognition in the coal industry. The Kamins' experiences illuminate how extraction is governed through everyday bureaucratic and political mechanisms that are deeply shaped by the intersection of gender, caste, and class, structuring who is seen as a legitimate worker, whose injuries are acknowledged, and whose labor remains invisible. Foregrounding these layered exclusions, the book demonstrates that mining ecologies are not only environmental but also social and institutional terrains where toxicity, precarity, and dispossession are unevenly distributed. Rather than presenting the coalfields as an isolated site of exploitation, the book situates Jharia within broader national and global energy regimes, showing how the demand for cheap coal is sustained through institutionalized invisibility and differential exposure to harm. By centering the knowledge, strategies, and political insights of the Kamins, the study rethinks labor politics in extractive economies and offers a critical account of how survival itself becomes a mode of analysis and resistance. This book will be of interest to researchers in gender studies, sociology of labor, feminist political economy, feminist ecology, and development studies.

The European Union (EU) is marked by historical connections, socio-economic interdependencies, and shared challenges in labour market development. Despite these commonalities, the region is also characterised by significant diversity in economic structures, demographic trends, political contexts, and educational systems.

This volume responds to the urgent need for a nuanced, comparative understanding of employability across the EU - in the face of digital transformation, demographic shifts, and post-pandemic economic recovery.

The purpose of this publication is to provide a multidisciplinary and evidence-based exploration of the key factors shaping employability across the EU. It critically engages with issues such as skills mismatches, youth unemployment, gender disparities, informal work, and migration, offering insights into both persistent challenges and emerging opportunities. By drawing on case studies, policy reviews, and regional data, the book presents a rich mosaic of experiences and diverse approaches to workforce development.

Contemporary Studies in Economic and Financial Analysis publishes a series of current and policy-relevant themed volumes within the fields of economics and finance. Both disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies are welcome.