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Transnational work and the evolution of sovereignty

Objective

Proposal Summary

This is a proposal to study the growth of posted migrant work in the European Union, and the impact of this on industrial relations. Within the European Union, changes in the application of EU law have resulted in the deterritorialization of sovereign regulatory authority. National industrial relations systems have been subordinated to internal market freedoms in four recent European Court of Justice decisions. These constrain the rights of unions and governments to regulate working conditions of foreign service providers operating in their territory, in effect allowing firms to create “spaces of exception” by exploiting enclaves of alternative, deterritorialized sovereignty. For example, a Polish construction worker on a German construction site working for a Polish subcontractor does not, either in practice or in law, have the same rights as a German or Polish worker working for a German subcontractor because the employment relationship in the first instance is in many respects regulated from Poland. Sovereignty has been reconfigured, through EU law and firm practice, so that it is no longer entirely dependent on territory, but also on other contingencies. It is hypothesized that variegated sovereignty is facilitating the segmentation of labor markets, via transnational subcontracting and agency work.

The project will involve fieldwork in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and at the EU level. The study will be based on ethnographic interviews, to record the experiences of posted migrants and 'native' workers who work with them, and 'expert' interviews of managers, union officials, and policy makers. Two industries have been selected for study: construction and metalworking, because of the prevalence of posted workers in those industries. There will also be a series of policy interviews aimed at understanding the political/legal changes taking place in the European Union which facilitate the growth of variegated sovereignty. These will be used to construct a series of comparative case studies of work sites and industries. The research team will include the Principle Investigator and three other researchers under his supervision.

Call for proposal

ERC-2010-StG_20091209
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Coordinator

JYVASKYLAN YLIOPISTO
EU contribution
€ 554 139,00
Address
Seminaarinkatu 15
40100 Jyvaskyla
Finland

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Region
Manner-Suomi Länsi-Suomi Keski-Suomi
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Administrative Contact
Mikko Yrjönsuuri (Prof.)
Principal investigator
Nathan Alan Lillie (Dr.)
Links
Total cost
No data

Beneficiaries (2)