The emergence of reflexive global labour law

The article introduces the main tenets of reflexive labour law and uses this perspective to interpret core trends in global labour law. It suggests a conceptual distinction between international and global labour law and identifies a transformation in the global labour law regime related to processes of reflexivity and constitutionalisation. The first part of the article analyses reflexivity within the International Labour Organization (ILO) in relation to its policy of defining labour standards as human rights. It interprets the increasing attention given to soft law in the ILO as a reflexive response to the globalisation of labour law outside the confines of the nation state. The core reflexive law concept of regulation of self-regulation is applied to analyse a key source of global labour law, namely codes of conduct regulating corporate citizenship and corporate social responsibility programmes in multinational companies. In the final section, the article argues that global labour law is emerging as a separate regime in the world society and comments on constitutionalisation as a key process in the emerging regime of global labour law.