Gender and the labour market in Europe: Britain, Germany and France compared

This paper has two objectives: to contrast patterns of female labour market participation in three West European societies and to develop a theoretical approach which can encompass both universal features of gender divisions in the labour market and nationally specific ones. Empirically, the focus is on the different levels and forms of labour force participation over the female life cycle, particularly on any resul-tant employment casualization. Consideration is also given to patterns of horizontal and vertical segregation and to pay. The differences between the three countries are explained by positing the existence of nationally specific gender profiles with a differential impact on labour market patterning along gender lines. These profiles are constructed by gender regimes at the level of the state which, in turn, are the result of political struggles and compromises of a variety of political actors. The paper utilizes European statistical data and secondary sources.     

Recession,austerity and gender: A comparison of eight European labour markets

The collapse in GDP brought about by the global economic crisis in 2008 affected female employment less than male employment, whereas austerity has been particularly harsh on women, a gendered impact described in the literature as “he‐cession to sh(e)‐austerity”. This article analyses gendered trends in the labour markets of eight European countries, decomposing quarterly changes in labour participation of women and men and in employment by sector. The “he‐cession to sh(e)‐austerity” scenario is not observed in all countries. Other channels through which austerity policies can jeopardize gender equality and women's rights are identified with reference to a typology of such policies.     

Government/third-sector relationship in a comparative perspective: the cases of France and West Germany

Both the private for-profit and the non-profit (or third) sectors provide what economists call public goods. The division of labour between these sectors, however, differs substantially across countries in terms of both qualitative and quantitative dimensions. Such cross-national differences are illustrated in the present paper with respect to France and West Germany. The autonomy of the state, the nature of the dominant actors and their style of interaction are identified as crucial variables shaping the linkage patterns of government/third-sector relationship. The cross-national comparison allows for the hypothesis that different patterns of government/third-sector linkages also shape different degrees of institutional adaptiveness in a changing political and economic environment.     

Macroeconomic determinants of migration: the case of Germany, 1964-1988

Macroeconomic determinants of immigration are analysed with pooled cross-country and time series data on net immigration to Germany from European countries during 1964-1988.
Results demonstrate clearly that both high and low frequency determinants have been important. Long run trends are determined by the degree and speed of per capita income convergence between the sending and receiving countries, while year-to-year changes in net immigration flows are dominated by cyclical economic conditions.     

Infrastructure of mobility: navigating borders,cities and markets

In this article, which is based on research conducted in Hong Kong from 2010 to 2013, and again in 2018, I analyse the region‐bound circulation of independent women sex workers from the Philippines across the Asian global cities of Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Macau. Migrating as visa‐free tourists, they maintain a valid immigration status and maximize their income in the informal economy by adopting a step‐down transient mobility pattern characterized by a downward hierarchical circulation to multiple city‐states and country destinations. As I show, their multinational migration is produced and structured through the instrumentalization of a mobility infrastructure constituted by a regime of visa‐free circulation, transportation developments, commercialized migration services, and social networks. In this article, I attempt to extend the contemporary analysis of unauthorized migration by moving away from the prevailing focus on incorporation and settlement and towards an examination of the logics and mechanics of migration flows that occur outside state‐sanctioned channels.     

Precarious lives,precarious labour: family support and young men's transitions to work in the UK

This research is about young people, family support and transitions into the workforce. We provide the results of a comparative, qualitative study with young men in two southern English towns. We argue that relationships of support in families are vital to young people's ability to ‘navigate’ precarious labour market opportunities. As Youth Studies has become increasingly preoccupied with individualism, we are compelled to draw attention to the collective support that is necessary to ‘launch’ the life trajectories of young people who are transitioning into an economic environment marked by insecurity and uncertainty. We conclude with recommendations for future research.     

Global value chains in international knowledge work: networks,stratifications and labour markets

In this article, I aim to cast light on the arguably indeterminate phenomenon of the global labour market (GLM) by placing the focus on an industry that has sometimes been perceived as epitomizing homogeneity and ‘world flatness’ in its deployment of geographically dispersed knowledge workers, that of international software development. Engaging in a sanguine analysis of this industry with reference to an empirical study of outsourcing to Ukraine it is revealed that labour markets servicing ICT (Information and communication technology) are subject to deep, if fluctuating, social stratifications. With reference to the notion of the global value chain (GVC), 1 1 ¹GVC analysis focuses on the governance patterns and relational dynamics between lead and supplier firms at the sectoral level. The GVC and its predecessor, the global commodity chain (GCC) focus on the inter‐firm linkages and especially power relations between different actors (Feuerstein 2013). The similar concept of global production network (GPN) concerns the broader set of relations of power, positionality and value capture between all relevant firm and extra firm actors within a network (Thompson 2013). For this study on sourcing in the global software industry, the term GVC will be utilized throughout.
the significance of factors such as knowledge, language, citizenship and age as labour market differentiators for knowledge work is brought to the fore.     

Service outsourcing and labour mobility in a digital age: transnational linkages between Japan and Dalian,China

In this article, I examine the transnational mobility of digital workers and the control of their labour across multiple production sites. The digitalization of work has progressively allowed businesses to outsource IT‐enabled service jobs to cheaper production sites offshore. The growth of the ‘offshore outsourcing' of white‐collar service jobs in East Asia has produced the mobility of cheap digital labour from Japan to Dalian in northeast China. They work at call centres and other Japanese‐speaking workplaces in the lower echelons of the city's IT sector, typically earning salaries in Chinese yuan at, or even below, the average Japanese minimum wage. Based on ethnographic findings, I argue that in the global digital economy, digital services are rendered exploitable through their transnational mobility and that this form of labour migration has developed because of the partial, fluid and contingent nature of the transnational links between the two locations. I analyse how the neoliberal logic of exception underpins the creation of IT parks in China and the casualization of labour in Japan to enable new forms of transnational labour control and capital accumulation.     

Unwanted sexual contact on campus: a comparison of women's and men's experiences

While sexual victimization continues to be a problem on college campuses, recent attention has been drawn to understanding gender differences in victimization rates and consequences. To date, these studies remain relatively few in number. The current study surveyed 651 male and female undergraduate students about unwanted sexual experiences during 1 academic year. Comparison of men and women revealed expected differences in incidence rates, with women reporting higher rates of unwanted contact. Within the subsample of reported victims, however, there was gender similarity in terms of the context of unwanted sexual experiences. Analyses also revealed the negative consequences of these experiences for both men and women and low rates of disclosure regardless of gender. Across the full sample of students surveyed, there were interesting gender differences in knowledge of campus support services, with women more likely to have attended a prevention program and to have indicated greater knowledge of rape crisis services.     

Ethnicity,opportunity, and upward mobility: Korean entrepreneurship in the Argentine garment industry 1965–2015

ABSTRACT

Currently, among the approximately 20,000 ethnic Koreans living in Argentina, an estimated 80% are engaged in the garment industry. Within the theoretical frameworks of immigrant entrepreneurship, this research examines why and how Korean Argentines have been continuously concentrated in the clothing industry from the beginning of Korean immigration in the 1960s to the present. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Argentina and on archival and documentary research, this study illustrates how Korean immigrant community in Argentina has settled and achieved upward mobility in the face of complex and fluctuating social and economic circumstances, combining opportunities with strategies and resources to create comparative advantages and benefits. By combining historical contextualisation with theories on immigrant entrepreneurs that had previously only been tested on short-term study periods, findings further suggest that scholars should pay closer attention to historical shifts and accounts in analysing longer-term periods of ethnic business.     

Policy, Preferences, and Patriarchy: The Division of Domestic Labor in East Germany, West Germany, and the United States

Individual agency observed in the gendered division of laboris shaped by structural factors, but only recently has evidenceemerged that the effect of women’s resources varies systematicallyin its sociopolitical context. Here we use the 1994 InternationalSocial Survey Program to assess whether the relative effectof a proxy for women’s and men’s preferences—hallmarkof individual choice—varies as well across three countrieswith divergent historical policy approaches regarding the privatesphere. East German socialist policies required and supportedwomen’s employment; West German policy promulgated a malebreadwinner model, and U.S. policy primarily remains silenton the private sphere. The division of domestic tasks and relativestrength of individual preferences on shifting it vary by region.In the former East Germany the division of domestic labor ismore egalitarian and the effect of preferences is small butequal for the genders. In West Germany the division is moretraditional and preference effects are greater, but gender differencesin these are insignificant. The U.S. division of domestic taskfalls between the two German regions, and the gender differencein preference effects is the greatest, with U.S. men’spreferences predicting significantly more variance than do U.S.women’s. Consequently, allowing the market to dominatedoes not yield equal strength of preferences in the individual-levelmodels used to predict the division of domestic tasks. Thissupports the dual-system feminist claims that capitalism canexacerbate nonmarket patriarchal hierarchies.     

Early career occupational mobility of Turkish and Moroccan second-generation migrants in Flanders,Belgium

This article analyses the early career occupational mobility of people from a Turkish or Moroccan descent in Flanders (Belgium). Previous research showed that second-generation migrants are less successful than natives when entering the labour market. We compare the progress in socio-economic status (SES) that youngsters of native and non-native descent make from their first to later jobs at the start of their career. Both second-generation immigrants and native majority young adults experience upward occupational mobility during this crucial phase of their occupational career. The gap between native and ethnic minority youth, however, does not narrow over the course of the years. The first job offers less SES for non-natives compared to that of natives, and the minority-native gap in occupational attainment remains constant afterwards. The future career is largely determined by the characteristics of the start of the occupational career, and educational attainment even before. Promising, however, might be the finding that a first job with a relative low occupational status does offer better opportunities for Turkish and Moroccan second-generation migrants than for native majority youth to do some catching up later on. In combination with a long-term negative impact of initial unemployment, ethnic minority youth perhaps are best off with starting to work as soon as possible after school leaving.     

Income distributions,labour market sectors and the Goldschmidt hypothesis: the nonmetropolitan United States in 1970 and 1980

Local social structures are not simply their national counterparts writ small. There are autonomous, locality-specific influences which have a significant bearing on variations in socio-economic conditions. To show this. this paper concentrates on two measures of income distribution — family/household income inequality and poverty rates. Drawing on data from a one-in-six systematic sample of nonmetropolitan U.S. counties for 1970 and 1980, variations in these conditions are evaluated in the context of labour market segmentation and Goldschmidt's ideas on the socio-economic consequences of large-scale farms. The direct effects of these causal forces are shown to be influenced by the employment structures of local labour markets. The most important determinants of income distribution differences within labour market types are shown to be monopoly sector employment, competitive sector employment, large farm holdings, nonwhite population compositions and location within the southern United States.