Almost all Latin American countries are still marked by extreme forms of social inequality – and to an extent, this seems to be the case regardless of national differences in the economic development model or the strength of democracy and the welfare state. Recent research highlights the fact that the heterogeneous labour markets in the region are a key source of inequality. At the same time, there is a strengthening of ‘exclusive’ social policy, which is located at the fault lines of the labour market and is ...

The working paper’s main objective is to explore the extent to which non-compliance to international labor rights is caused by global competition. From the perspective of institutional economics, compliance with core labor rights is beneficial for sustainable development. Nonetheless, violations of these rights occur on a massive scale. The violators usually blame competitive pressures. A number of studies have come to the conclusion that non-compliance does not provide for a competitive edge, thereby denying ...

This paper explores the relationship between migrant leaders and labour rights activists starting with the acknowledgment that this is often a source of frustration for all subjects involved. The collaboration between organisations of migrants and those of workers is not always smooth and truly collaborative, yet foreign workers have an increasing importance in the negotiation of better labour rights in Europe. The topic is discussed by taking the case of migrant domestic labour in Italy and the experience ...

The design, reformulation, and final signing of Plan Colombia by the then US President, Bill Clinton, on the 13 July 2000 initiated in a new era of the US State´s involvement in supposedly sovereign-territorial issues of Colombian politics. The implementation of Plan Colombia there-on-after brought about a major realignment of political-military scales and terrains of conflict that have renewed discourses concerning the contemporary imperialist interests of key US-based but transnationally-projected social forces, ...

Seit einigen Jahren erfährt Lateinamerika einen epochalen Umbruch. Das neoliberale Modell ist in einer Krise. Die Politik des „Washington Consensus“ und das Diktum einer politisch nicht kontrollierbaren Globalisierung werden zunehmend hinterfagt. Aus der Linkswende haben sich neue alternative Politikkonzepten entwickelt. In dem vorliegenden Working Paper wird auf die Beziehung von sozialen Bewegungen, Ideologien und Regierungen eingegangen. In ihrer Diagnose arbeitet Maristella Svampa die ambivalenten Charakteristiken ...

Das vorliegende Papier befasst sich mit Bedingungen, Potenzialen, Akteuren und Perspektiven, die mit den Industrie-4.0-Strategien verbunden sind. Es geht dabei nicht nur um die Generierung und Nutzung neuer technologischer Möglichkeiten, sondern auch darum, ob und wie das deutsche Produktionsmodell, dass anders als bspw. das disruptive us-amerikanische Modell auf inkrementell-evolutionäre Veränderungen setzt, sich angesichts der neuen Herausforderungen behaupten kann. Damit verknüpft ist die Frage, ob die deutschen ...

The book makes a major contribution to the controversy about the factors driving the persistence and expansion of the informal economy. Unlike most others studies which either take a structuralist or an actor’s choice approach to the topic, this study combines a careful assessment of the economic, social and political circumstances promoting informality with a meticulously carried out econometric analysis of the dominant characteristics of workers as well as enterprises in the informal economy in comparison to those ...