4157 - Comparative Perspectives toward Labor Market Institutions: Economic Inclusion and Exclusion in Europe and the United States of America

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

Scholars have been conducting a growing number of studies on work organizations and labor market institutions in the advanced capitalist societies. But disciplinary and national boundaries have continued to bedevil the field’s progress. Of particular concern are boundaries dividing scholars in such fields as industrial and employment relations, economic sociology, and comparative political economy. This session brings together European and American scholars who are studying the organizational and institutional underpinnings of labor market segmentation, the better to understand the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion over time and across geographic areas.

Theories of labor market segmentation were of course first developed in the United States, but by the late 1980s had fallen out of favor among Americans. By contrast, the concepts of economic dualism and labor market segmentation have come to find a ready audience among European scholars, who have sought to understand how and why a growing proportion of workers have been relegated to peripheral positions within the labor market. This trend toward dualism has often been conceptualized in terms of a growing divide between labor market “insiders” and “outsiders,” the existence of which has worked to weaken European workers and trade unions generally. Current processes characterized by technological change and digitalization are often viewed as exacerbating divisions and inequality in society.

This session will bring together leading scholars studying the structural roots of labor market segmentation, both in Europe and the USA, the better to yield a common understanding of economic trends remaking the boundaries of social and economic inequality in the advanced capitalist world.

Sub Unit

• Special Session

Session Organizers

• Valeria Pulignano, University of Leuven

• Steven Vallas, Northeastern University

Presider

• Steven Vallas, Northeastern University

Panelists

• Virginia Doellgast, Cornell University

• Chris Howell, Oberlin College

• Jeffrey J. Sallaz, University of Arizona

• Matt Vidal, Loughborough University London