Global labour governance: potential and limits of an emerging perspective

Abstract

The article addresses the meaning and relevance of the recently emerged idea of ‘global labour governance’. Increasingly influential in policy, it has been criticized for political and theoretical reasons, including the risk of normative ideological uses. The article suggests that labour studies should nonetheless engage, theoretically and empirically, with the issue and the perspective of ‘global labour governance’. This is because of its growing political importance and for the attention it brings to still understudied issues of ‘multi-level’ dynamics, ‘networks’ and ‘reflexivity’. Systematic analysis of governance alternatives is needed. The traditions of the sociology of work and industrial relations can contribute to this analysis through their elaboration on informality, sectoral differences and collective action, as well as by problematizing the idea of ‘effectiveness’.

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