070216 FS Forschungsseminar (2017W)

Global Labour and Border Studies

This seminar has a focus on borders, inviting students to work on border themes with regard to work and labour. It covers questins that relate these two issues or approaches, such as
- Labour migration and political borders
- Labour migration and socio-economic borders
- Labour market segmentation
- Multiplication of labour relations within and between countries
- Global Commodity Chains and labour
- Global Care Chains and labour

The seminar departs from
- A broad notion of work and labour including paid and unpaid, formal and informal, free and unfree forms of work and labour; and their combination across social and political borders
- A broad notion of border including social and economic borders, socio-cultural borders, gender relations, political borders of states, unions or block systems, bordered spaces (e.g. gated workplaces, gated public space, gated communities)
- A systemic understanding of historical processes: Migration, labour conditions and relations and divisions of labour will be regarded as complex systems: each change of a single position/relation impacts on any other, e.g.
o Labour migration impacts on work and labour relations of migrants’ home as well as migrants’ host countries and regions
o Labour relations in gainful employment impact on family and households
o Labour relations and labour migration reflect a region’s position in the global economy
o Borders have multiple functions, serving as means of selection of labour power as well as means of protection.

Spatial and temporal framework: no limitation