Research projects in labour law
Green Precarity
In collaboration with a team of scholars at the University of Glasgow, Universidad del Rosario in Colombia, Universidad Simon Bolivar in Ecuador and DAR in Peru, Vera Pavlou is working on a two-year project which examines the impacts of green capitalism on workers and their communities in Scotland and in Latin America. The project develops the cross-disciplinary term ‘green precarity’ to examine to what extent programmes and initiatives aimed at greening the economy deplete the abilities of structurally vulnerable groups to sustain life. The question is, then, whether and under what conditions could legal and governance regimes reverse processes of precarisation of life and promote fairer socio-ecological transitions. The project is funded under the Knowledge Frontiers programme of the British Academy.
Class Conflict and Institutional Change: Otto Kahn-Freund (1900-1979) and the Invention of Labour Law
Working in collaboration with Wolfgang Streeck, and with financial support from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Ruth Dukes is currently leading this collaborative project, which investigates the invention of labour law as a distinct field of legal doctrine and scholarship. Employing the lens of the life and work of Otto Kahn-Freund (1900-1979), the project considers developments spanning the short twentieth century, from the end of the first world war to the struggle over the second postwar settlement in the 1970s and thereafter. In particular, the project addresses two questions: How was legal scholarship on the conflict between capital and labour related to both contemporary history and simultaneous developments in the social sciences, and what may be learned from this today?
Regulating the Labour–Capital Conflict in a Turbulent Era: Neoliberalism Reloaded or New Right–Wing Populist Wave?
In this two-year project funded by a British Academy International Fellowship, Julieta Lobato explores whether neoliberalism's dominance in shaping the labour–capital conflict is diminishing. Taking the UK and Argentina as case studies, the project examines the historical evolution of labour law from the 1980s to current times, focusing on two main aspects: 1) the role of the state in mediating the labour–capital conflict, particularly the role of violence in enforcing labour policies, and 2) the reconfiguration of the political subjectivity of labour.
Wages and In-Work Poverty
Antonio Garcia-Munoz Alhambra considers the connection between wages (concretely ‘minimum’ wages) and in-work poverty, with a view to exploring the idea of low (non-adequate) wages as exploitation. To do this, he uses a theoretical framework that understands wages not only as market prices, but also as having a social function.
Work on Demand
Work On Demand was a six year project funded by the European Research Council from 2018 until 2023. Together with a team of researchers, Ruth Dukes investigated the ever-evolving nature of contracts and contracting behaviour in the world of work. A particular point of focus was the emerging ‘platform’ or ‘on demand’ economy. Research was also undertaken in the hospitality and catering sector and in human resource management. One subproject addressed the question of the meaning of strategic litigation for workers and trade unions. The WorkOD project had a strong comparative dimension, analysing differences in forms of contract and contracting behaviour across jurisdictions and over the course of several decades. With the aim of developing a new methodology or framework for the study of work contracts, elements of economic sociology, sociology of law, and political economy were synthesised by the team into a new ‘economic sociology of labour law’. More information can be found here.