Managing the Margins: Gender, Citizenship, and the International Regulation of Precarious Employment »

Leah F. Vosko is Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Feminist Political Economy at York University, where she teaches comparative political economy, public policy, and women and politics. She is the author of Temporary Work: The Gendered Rise of a Precarious Employment Relationship (University of Toronto Press, 2000), editor of Precarious Employment: Understanding Labour Market Insecurity in Canada, and co-author of Self-Employed Workers Organize: Law, Policy and Unions (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006 and 2005 respecitvely). She is currently overseeing a multi-year collaborative international research project on comparative perspectives on precarious employment, the Comparative Perspectives Database (CPD), linked to the Gender and Work Database (GWD) project (www.genderwork.ca).

This book explores the precarious margins of contemporary labor markets. Over the last few decades, there has been much discussion of a shift from full-time permanent jobs to higher levels of part-time and temporary employment and self-employment. Despite such attention, regulatory approaches have not adapted accordingly. Instead, in the absence of genuine alternatives, old regulatory models are applied to new labour market realities, leaving the most precarious forms of employment intact. The book places this disjuncture in historical context and focuses on its implications for workers most likely to be at the margins, particularly women and migrants, using illustrations from Australia, the United States, and Canada, as well as member states of the European Union.

Managing the Margins provides a rigorous analysis of national and international regulatory approaches, drawing on original and extensive qualitative and quantitative material. It innovates by analyzing the historical and contemporary interplay of employment norms, gender relations, and citizenship boundaries.

1 Forging a Gender Contract in Early National and International Labour Regulation 26

2 Constructing and Consolidating the Standard Employment Relationship in International Labour Regulation 51

3 The Partial Eclipse of the SER and the Dynamics of SER-Centrism in International Labour Regulations 73

4 Regulating Part-Time Employment: Equal Treatment and its Limits 95

5 Regulating Temporary Employment: Equal Treatment, Qualified 126

6 Self-Employment and the Regulation of the Employment Relationship: From Equal Treatment to Effective Protection 165

7 Alternatives to the SER 208

App. A Table of Selected International Labour Regulations, 1906-2008 230

App. B List of International Labour Conferences Observed 233

App. C List of Interviews 234

App. D Data Sources and Notes for Statistical Figures and Tables 236

Bibliography of Primary Sources 243

Bibliography of Secondary Sources 256

Index 291