Theorizing transnational labour markets: a research heuristic based on the new economic sociology

Abstract

In this article, I suggest that transnational labour markets are characterized by their multi-layered embeddedness, not only in national but also in transnational institutional settings. Hence, the national institutional factors formerly at the centre of sociological labour market theories insufficiently explain the newly emerging transnational labour markets. To account for the full complexity and institutional context of the latter, I propose an inductive theoretical approach to transnational labour markets and develop a research heuristic to instruct empirical studies about particular transnational labour markets and inductive theory building. This heuristic draws on analytical categories as developed by the new economic sociology of markets. The empirical example of the transnational labour market that matches eastern European workers to jobs in the German meat industry serves to illustrate how one can use this heuristic, which reveals some preliminary features of transnational labour markets compared with national ones, as well as some research gaps to be addressed by future studies.

Interest representation in transnational labour markets: Campaigning as an alternative to traditional union action?

“…The transcripts and the written documents were coded with Atlas.ti, and interpretative memos were used during the entire process of going through the data. Coding was guided by a research heuristic developed by the author (Mense-Petermann, 2019), drawing on the new sociology of markets and particularly reflecting the social construction of markets (Engels, 2009). For the present study, particularly those codes that reflect the role of actors, institutions and power asymmetries in the de-commodification of labour power (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Polanyi, 1957) were pertinent and were adopted.…”

Making Migrants’ Input Invisible: Intersections of Privilege and Otherness From a Multilevel Perspective

“…Thus, in these transnational labour markets (Shire, 2020), we see both direct and legal (through explicitly exclusionary norms and practices) and indirect (through apparently neutral norms and practices) effects of de-professionalisation and an erosion of labour rights. Although these can be observed in the entire elderly care sector (Dammayr, 2019), in this case they are reinforced by the ethnicisation and transnationalisation of the labour market segment and a shifting of risks from the West to the East within subcontracting structures that is typical for transnational labour markets (Mense-Petermann, 2020).…”

Beyond blue ocean? The roles of intermediaries in the cross‐border labour market between Japan and Vietnam

“…Several studies in the discipline of economic sociology have also begun to raise queries about the necessity of researching a broader aspect of migration market‐making. According to Mense‐Petermann (2020b), the transnational labour market 3 is positioned as a broader venue of market exchange. She underlines the need to study how this market is embedded in different countries’ employment institutions and how it is constructed; there are still not many thorough examinations of the variegated migration regimes from the perspective of the labour market.…”