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	Volume 5 No 1 - contents click here for abstracts
	Casual labour is often thought of as a hangover from the bad old days, when agricultural workers were hired by the day, homeworkers slaved hidden away in back rooms and street vendors eked out a living in urban slums. Modernisation, new technology, industrialisation and economic development, it might be thought, are doing away with such primitive conditions. Unfortunately, as this volume shows, this is far from being the case. In fact the logic of financialisation and the restructuring of global value chains is leading in precisely the opposite direction, with new forms of casualisation taking place right within the heart of the ‘formal’ sector, and employees of global corporations experiencing growing precariousness in both developed and developing countries, driven by the pressures of competition in a global economy, This important collection brings together new theoretical insights into the dynamics of the new casualisation of employment, as well as presenting empirical evidence of its spread from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.. Contents Passing the buck: corporate restructuring and the casualisation of employment Ursula Huws Transnational corporations as financial groups Claude Serfati ‘Everywhere in chains’: Work, commodity chain analysis, and the subversion of accountability James Lawson Informalisation and the social relations of production: Insights from urban Karnataka, 1990-2005 Thomas Barnes Skirting Regulation? Trade Liberalisation, Retailers and the Informalisation of South Africa’s Clothing industry Marlea Clarke and Shane Godfrey Labour makeup: a case study of 800,000 cosmetics resellers in Brazil Ludmila Costhek Abilio Temporary agency work in the Finnish health care sector: Greater flexibility and freedom in the workplace? Hannele Palukka and Tiina Tiilikka Work discipline and corporate training in modernising large companies in Argentina Claudia Figari Freeze-dried flexibility: a new morphology of labour, casualisation and value Ricardo Antunes The restructuring of labour in Brazil in the 2000s: flexible work and the precarisation of working life Giovanni Alves Review: recent publications on precarious work Keith Randle	to read online, go here to purchase, go here