Purpose The paper reviews Fox’s frames of reference against subsequent changes in the composition of the labour force, shifts in social values and the arrival of the politics of identity. Design/methodology/approach A close reading of the frames of reference is placed in the context of Fox’s...

In an era when globalization has supposedly challenged the ability of the nation state to manage economic affairs, I shall argue that the state not only still matters but that it also plays a major role in processes of labour market stratification for migrant workers. Using the organizing...

This paper introduces a method and preliminary findings from a database that systematically measures the character and stringency of immigration policies. Based on the selection of that data for nine countries between 1999 and 2008, we challenge the idea that any one country is systematically...

This article challenges the idea that globalization is an inexorable free market process that fundamentally changes the nature of economic competition. Using evidence on hiring practices from the English football league (1946-95) it presents a case study of a labour market where globalization...

Despite significant achievements in empirical research, considerable unease exists about the lack of conceptual and theoretical debate within the sociology of work. One potentially significant problem is the uncritical use of concepts that have their origins in Marxism and purport to explain the...

The rapid growth in nonstandard forms of employment toward the end of the 20th century has fueled claims about the spread of “bad jobs” within Anglo-American capitalism. Research from the United States indicates that such jobs have more bad characteristics than do permanent jobs after...

This paper presents the methods and preliminary findings from IMPALA, a database that systematically measures the character and stringency of immigration policies. Based on a selection of data for six pilot countries between 1990 and 2008, we document the variation of immigration policies across...