This article aims to outline some of the ways in which issues of migration and employment relations have been studied in the European context, cross referencing recent interventions in the USA. The argument is a discussion of some of the different dimensions of migration and the way debates within Industrial Relations have been shaped. More specifically, the article will look at the way trade unions have made the ethical turn towards questions of migration and equality. The article will observe the (...) way these issues have been academically framed and the manner in which the ‘problem’ of migration is conceptualized. It will attempt to provide a framework for discussing the way we have been analysing these issues and the ethical dimensions of these discussions. The relevance of the article is that institutionally responding to migration is not solely a question of adjusting employment relations or Industrial Relations institutions to various ‘new’ constituencies. The article will show that the topic raises issues as to how we actually understand what the study of employment and especially Industrial Relations are. The article also argues that there is a growing need for researchers to be aware of ethical issues when studying in the area of migration, and to be sensitive to competing voices and methodologies in this area. In particular we need approaches that are multidimensional and that emphasize the history and context of change in social constituencies, the new mechanisms of representation within communities, the role of the political in terms of discourses and resources, and the broad play and spaces of regulation and social policy. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze people's confidence in political institutions in the so-called BRICS countries, that is, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. I argue that the quality of macroeconomic indicators cannot explain the variation in political confidence between the five most dynamic new emerging economies, and that there is no substantial difference among the young, middle-aged, and senior-aged groups. By combing data from the Asia Barometer Survey and the World Value Survey, I provide (...) two complementary approaches, one sociocultural and the other micropolitical, to reveal the factors that influence people's confidence in four major political institutions. The explanatory effects of these two approaches are mixed. Political identity and values, in most cases, have a significant impact on political confidence. On the other hand, high levels of interpersonal social trust, individual happiness, and satisfaction with living standards also show positive influences. (shrink)

Despite continued social protest, something quite fundamental has changed in the regulation of class relations in France. This article explores two paradoxes of this transformation. First, a dense network of institutions of social dialogue and worker representation has become implanted in French firms at the same time as trade union strength has declined. Second, the transformation has involved a relaxation of centralized labor market regulation on the part of the state, yet the French state remains a central actor in the (...) reconstruction of the industrial relations system. Institutional reform of industrial relations could not take place without the active intervention of the state because employers and trade unions alone were unable to create durable industrial relations institutions. The collapse of trade unionism meant the need for new actors on the labor side and only the state could both create and confer legitimacy upon those new actors. (shrink)

Based on quantitative indicators for fifteen advanced countries between 1974 and 2005, and case studies of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Ireland, this article analyzes the trajectory of institutional change in the industrial relations systems of advanced capitalist societies, with a focus on Western Europe. In contrast to current comparative political economy scholarship, which emphasizes the resilience of national institutions to common challenges and trends, it argues that despite a surface resilience of distinct national sets, all countries (...) have been transformed in a neoliberal direction. Neoliberal transformation manifests itself not just as institutional deregulation but also as institutional conversion, as the functions associated with existing institutional forms change in a convergent direction. A key example is the institution of centralized bargaining, once the linchpin of an alternative, redistributive and egalitarian, model of negotiated capitalism, which has been reshaped in the past twenty years to fit the common imperative of liberalization. (shrink)