Labour law in an era of globalization : transformative practices and possibilities

Throughout the industrial world, the discipline of labour law has fallen into deep philosophical and policy crisis, at the same time as new theoretical approaches make it a field of considerable intellectual ferment.

Modern labour law evolved in a symbiotic relationship with a postwar institutional and policy agenda, the social, economic and political underpinnings of which have gradually eroded in the context of accelerating international economic integration and wage-competition, a decline in the capacity of the nation-state to steer economic progress, the ascendancy of fiscal austerity and monetarism over Keynesian/welfare state politics, the appearance of post-industrial production models, the proliferation of contingent employment relationships, the fragmentation of class-based identities and emergence of new social movements, and the significantly increased participation of women in paid work.

These developments offer many appealing possibilities - the opportunity, for example, to contest the gender division of labour and re-think the boundaries between immigration and labour policy. But they also hold out quite threatening prospects - including increased unemployment and inequality and the decline of workers' organizations and social participation - in the context of proliferating constraints imposed by international financial pressures on enacting redistributive social and economic policies.

New strategies must be developed to meet these challenges.

These essays - which are the product of a transnational comparative dialogue among academics and practitioners in labour law and related legal fields, including social security, immigration, trade, and development - identify, analyze, and respond to some of the conceptual and policy challenges posed by globalization.