Who Works for Globalisation? The challenges and possibilities for international labour studies

Abstract This introductory article to the special issue surveys the field of international labour studies and examines the key areas of growth over the past decade. It locates three core areas of the new literature: 1) the social construction of new labour forces across an expanding international division of labour; 2) the self-organising potential of workers, particularly within non-traditional sectors; and 3) the possibilities for transborder labour movements to help address the asymmetrical power relationships between globalised capital and localised labour. It argues that international labour studies as a field needs to make explicit its challenge to mainstream political economy by detailing how struggles over the construction, reproduction, utilisation and restructuring of labour forces are the contested social foundations upon which the global economy stands.