Working Lives Research Institute

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Workings Lives News, Issue 9, August 2011

The Working Lives continues to spearhead cutting edge social research and this summer our Electronic newsletter introduces another swathe of new projects, some fresh book publications, launches and other recent events about the world of work and working people. Don’t leave it too late to apply to join a new intake for the Professional Doctorate in Researching work or alternatively, enrol on our popular CPD in Union Learning.

For those of you who missed the chance to donate to Brain Tumour UK in memory of John Kirk, who died after a long battle against a brain tumour, aged just 53, you can do so via his brother’s
website, here.

Once again we’ve got loads going on, so scroll down, have a browse on our ever-expanding website, and ‘Like us’ on ‘Facebook’. Get in touch with your comments and feedback and encourage your colleagues and friends to subscribe to our email list: workinglives@londonmet.ac.uk.

The Gower Handbook of Discrimination at Work, edited by WLRI researcher Tessa Wright and Hazel Conley from Queen Mary, University of London, was published in July 2011. The 22-chapter volume brings together contributions from academics and practitioners who have expert knowledge of the various forms of discrimination faced by workers and includes chapters by several WLRI staff and associates - Sonia McKay, Nick Clark, Andrea Winkelmann-Gleed, Anna Paraskevopoulou, Monika Beutel, Sian Moore, Fiona Colgan and Aidan McKearney.

See here for more information.

Sonia McKay (Working Lives, FASS) and Alice Bloch (City University London) have won a large ESRC grant for a new project "Undocumented migrants, ethnic enclaves and networks : opportunities, traps or class-based constructs", be starting on 1 October. Watch this space for more details.

Working Lives organised a memorial event for John Kirk at the Women’s Library on 31st March, 2011. As well as presentations from  colleagues on their memories of his working life, we also heard a moving tribute from John’s partner Alison.

Those who are remembering John today are encouraged to sponsor  John’s brother, David, who is raising money for Brain Tumour UK by cycling to France (on John’s bike).

You can sponsor David online by going here.

Go here to read all the memorial contributions for John.

Want to understand the changing world of work and working lives? Keen to explore the meaning of work, globalisation and social change? Actively engaged in the trade union movement, the social, community, non-governmental or voluntary sector and wish to enhance your own working life through further study and pursue your own doctoral level research into an area related to your work?

See more info and see our new leaflet, as of July 2011, here.

The Certificate in Continuing Professional Development in Union Learning has been developed in response to the huge growth in trade union involvement in learning and the rise of the Union Learning Representative. Students currently on the course come from a variety of backgrounds, ages and trade unions.

For more, updated info, see here.

A conference was organised in May by the Working Lives Research Institute to report back from a pioneering research project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, to investigate the enforcement of employment rights for migrant domestic workers in Britain.

Based on survey material, individual records recovered from the UK Borders Agency and interviews with migrant domestic workers, the project identifies widespread tax evasion and breaches of employment rights, and examines the extent to which they are detected and rectified by the State’s enforcement bodies.

The report (“Turning a Blind Eye”) and its implications for the fight against exploitation and forced labour was presented to a well attended conference at Toynbee Hall, by authors Nick Clark & Leena Kumarappan and discussed with a panel of distinguished experts including: Dr Bridget Anderson, Centre for Migration Policy and Society, Richard Murphy, Tax Research UK, Marissa Begonia, Justice for Domestic Workers (J4DW), Diana Holland, Unite the union, and Paul Whitehouse, Chair of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority.

Contact Nick Clark for more info.

Undocumented workers’ transitions, by Sonia McKay, Eugenia Markova and Anna Paraskevopoulou has recently been published by Routledge. The book draws from the Framework Six funded project, Undocumented workers’ transitions, which WLRI worked on between 2007 and 2009.

The authors explore how immigration laws, while aimed at discouraging undocumented migration, actually sustain it. It documents the circumstances that have caused previously documented migrants to become undocumented and explores the impact of their changing status on their families and on their own employment opportunities.

For more, and to download an order form, see here.

The first European workshop of the Media for Diversity and Migrant Integration project (MEDIVA) 
took place in Florence on 12 and 13 May 2011. Eugenia Markova and Sonia McKay represented the 
WLRI team at the workshop. The project is focusing on four related themes: media content; media 
news making and production practices; media recruitment and employment practices ; media 
training practices. 

See the full story here.

ACAS, the conciliation and advisory service, has commissioned WLRI researcher Sonia McKay to prepare a paper on ‘The future implications of migrant labour for employment relations’. The paper will form part of a series of follow-up papers to the ACAS Future of Workplace Relations Policy Discussion paper.

The first Global health and migration summer school took place in July 2011 with a first week's teaching held in Bologna and a second in Venice. WLRI is one of eight universities participating in the summer school, which brings together medical students along with social scientists to consider issues related to migration and health. Four London Metropolitan University students, three from WLRI and one from ISET have been successful in winning places on the summer school.

The last in the ESRC seminars on migration was hosted by WLRI and took place on 15 July 2011, at the Womens’ Library. See here.

In June 2011 the European trade union EFFAT is held a press conference which heard the interim results of the project on precarious work which the union commissioned WLRI to undertake. WLRI researcher Anna Paraskevopoulou, who has also given presentations of the research at EFFAT sector conferences held in Hungary and Portugal, was invited to attend the press conference.

German research institute the Freidrich Ebert Stiftung have published a report by WLRI's Nick Clark and Professor Jane Hardy of Hertfordshire University to mark the opening up of the whole EU labour market to workers from the 8 eastern European states who joined in May 2004.  At that time, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden were the only states to open their labour markets to workers from the new EU member states.

Read the rest here.