Migration, Precarity, and Global Governance

Abstract

For too long the movement of labour and the labour movement have been studied in splendid isolation. This volume addresses their intersection. Karl Polanyi’s intuition that history moves through a double movement of disembedding under market rule followed by re-embedding under societal control underlies the overall argument. In different, but complementary, ways the book’s 15 chapters address migration and precarious work along with diverse social movement responses beyond ‘North’ and ‘South’. An interdisciplinary and comparative approach emphasizes the complexity of historically grounded social relations. The first part of the book presents five complementary perspectives on the political economy of migration, labour and citizenship. Part two analyses labour unions’ historical relations with migrant workers and the current changes in their orientation and approaches to organisation of, with or by migrants, immigrants and new ethnic minorities. Part three discusses alternative global norms and institutional propositions by international organisations as they relate to an incipient global framework for the governance of migration. It examines states’ and regional organisations’ subscriptions to international human, labour and migrants’ rights and it discusses these powerful actors’ accountability for the actual implementation of these rights. Its four chapters explore, in detail, the standpoints of trade unions, migrant organisations and other organisations and movements of civil society vis-a-vis an emerging normative framework for the global governance of migration, and enquire into the actual possibilities of civil society impacting on the implementation of human rights claims and codes of corporate social responsibility.