The pandemic of Covid-19 exposed critical gaps in social policy and underscored the foundational role of families and households in both societal and economic stability. This introductory chapter to a Special Issue explores the interdependence between formal economic participation and unpaid domestic labour – collectively referred to as ‘social reproduction’. Drawing on feminist political economy, the chapter addresses how gendered and undervalued reproductive labour is essential to economic growth and the realisation of international commitments such as the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly gender equality and inclusive growth. This Special Issue uses South Korea as a comparative case study due to its unique economic trajectory, rapid demographic ageing, stark gender inequalities, and limited social protection systems. The country’s long working hours, low fertility rate, and pronounced wage and care burdens on women illustrate how inadequate social reproduction support can threaten broader social and economic sustainability. The pandemic further intensified these issues, disrupting institutional supports and deepening inequalities. This Special Issue collectively examines how policies across different contexts either alleviate or exacerbate the tensions between productive and reproductive labour, using South Korea as a focal point for comparison. This comparative analysis highlights the need for structural reforms and cultural change to support effective social reproduction policies, emphasising that gender-equal leave, accessible childcare, and shared caregiving responsibilities are crucial for work-family balance and social well-being. South Korea’s experience illustrates both progress and ongoing challenges, offering valuable lessons on the limitations of market-driven approaches and the importance of resilient, state-supported family policies.

The article examines the drivers of migrant atypical employment in the manufacturing sector of Emilia-Romagna, an Italian region that is well known for its high-quality manufacturing productions and industrial relations. By drawing on administrative data based on mandatory communications, we document that, even in such an institutional context, migrants have a disproportionately higher likelihood of being hired through either fixed-term or agency contracts than native workers. We interpret this evidence through a set of different theories, including human capital theory, dual labour market processes, the use of precarious contracts as screening devices, and institutional segmentation theories. The empirical analysis reveals that while migrant employment through fixed-term contracts is consistent with dual processes and screening practices, the hiring of migrants with agency contracts is driven by processes of institutional segmentation, through which employers shift the costs of flexibility to the most vulnerable and less organized segments within the labour force, such as migrants. Managerial and policy implications are discussed.

This article considers how the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a remarkable social experiment in the market for migrant ‘au pair’ labour in Australia. As has been illustrated in broader accounts of the pandemic’s ‘care crisis’, the global health emergency cracked open underlying fault lines, as capacities for social reproduction were stretched to breaking point. At the same time, the pandemic deepened the precarity of temporary migrants as they lost jobs and incomes, experienced housing insecurity, and were excluded from state emergency relief measures. Building on interdisciplinary feminist literatures on gender, work, migration, and social reproduction, this article adds to emerging scholarship on the growing phenomenon of au pairing in Australia to examine drivers of demand, migrant mobilities in and out of au pair labour, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon the market. While au pairing emerged during the pandemic as a form of survival work where migrants had little negotiating power, the market ultimately shifted when emergency childcare measures were withdrawn, migrant labour became scarce, and visa restrictions on working hours were relaxed. In addition to providing new empirical insights into au pairing in Australia, the findings underscore the constitutive role of law and policy settings in shaping the distributions and divisions of reproductive labour, which can both consolidate and also challenge broader gendered care norms and distributions and the social reproduction bargain.

More than a million foreigners reportedly reside in South Korea now, with unskilled migrant workers accounting for a majority. Although the country's reliance on imported foreign labor is likely to continue unabated, the country prides itself as an ethnically homogenous society and insists on almost zero-immigration policy. However, this paper shows that Korean society is rapidly becoming a multicultural society and this process is inevitable and irreversible. In support of this argument, the paper examines various social factors that are contributing to the making of a multiethnic Korea, including the continuing influx of migrant workers, rapid aging of the population, low fertility rate, and shortage of brides. The paper also assesses the applicability of various theories and trends of migration to the Korean context. The Korean case suggests a need for a paradigm shift in understanding multiculturalism. This is because the dominant perspectives and theories on multiculturalism have been western-centric, based on western experience and focusing on racial differences and tensions. Multiculturalism in Korea as well as in its neighboring countries like China, Japan, and Taiwan is fundamentally different, as it involves people of similar physical appearances and historical cultural bonds, and it entails ethnic rather than racial differences.

This article addresses a gap in the scholarly literature on the legal regulation of temporary labour migration by tracing the legislative history and regulation of work visas for short stay specialists and occupational trainees. By reason of their acute temporariness, both short stay workers and occupational trainees could be regarded as having a migration status that makes them vulnerable in their work relations. In addition, this vulnerability means they may accept terms and conditions that undercut domestic labour standards. Although the detailed legislative tracing of both visas reveals various attempts to re-regulate both visas in favour of greater scrutiny of employer requests for overseas labour, tightening access requirements and increasing enforcement and monitoring capacity, these have been largely incapable of preventing instances of egregious exploitation. These case studies on two little-known visas mirror the growing concerns around the integrity of Australia’s temporary labour migration program more generally and point to the myriad tensions, challenges and complexities inherent in the regulation of temporary labour migration programs around the globe.

The language of human rights is a prominent tool of choice to push for moral principles such as justice, equity, and fairness in the social, economic, and political spheres. Simultaneously, the concept and practice of human rights have attracted critiques. Relativism is one such enduring critique. Relativists advocate due and reasonable consideration towards cultural diversity and specificity of diverse human communities, within the limits allowed by universality of human rights. The relativist critique featured prominently in the debates surrounding Qatar’s hosting of the FIFA World Cup 2022. Commentators have spoken about Qatar’s scrutiny often moving beyond legitimate human rights criticism, uninformed activism being counterproductive; and the appropriateness of, largely, Western and maximalist ideals of human rights being applied without accounting for local needs and peculiarities. In this Article, I bring together the literature on the relativist critique and the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 as a case study, to examine the usefulness and limitation of human rights as a language of critique to achieve meaningful transformative change in sporting contexts. I focus on the debates surrounding the rights of migrant workers and the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community; and argue that while human rights advocacy had a notable impact in relation to FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, it is a tale full of cautions and lessons.

One year ago, the Qatar World Cup was in full swing, and Qatar was omnipresent in our public and private spheres. For many, the Qatar 2022 World Cup will forever be intimately connected with the plight of migrant workers. This Article dives into the confluence of spectacle, counter-marketing, international—labor and human rights—law, and local reforms, which came together in the long decade which followed FIFA’s fateful decision in December 2010 to give the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. It starts by situating the FIFA World Cup 2022 within Qatar’s drive for soft power and nation branding, before turning to re-counting how the 2022 World Cup was “ambushed” in the name of Qatar’s migrant workers and their rights, putting the issue on the global agenda and triggering the involvement of the ILO. Thereafter, the Article discusses the effects of this ambush counter-marketing by engaging with the labor reforms introduced by the Qatari government, while highlighting their limits in terms of scope and implementation. The Article concludes with a general discussion on the blind spots and shortcomings of the turn to counter-marketing as a strategy to vindicate international human rights or labor rights.

Why is China's household registration system so resilient, and why are migrant workers consistently excluded from equal urban welfare? By disaggregating the hukou and land components of the rural–urban dualist regime, this article argues that dualist land ownership, formalized in China's 1982 Constitution, perpetuates the hukou system and unequal welfare rights. On the one hand, dualist land ownership results in an abundance of low-cost, informal housing in urban villages. This reduces the cost of short-term labour reproduction and diminishes migrants’ demands for state-defined urban rights. On the other hand, dualist land ownership enables local governments to amass significant revenues from land sales. The prominence of land-based revenues prompts local governments to link urban welfare rights with formal property ownership and residency, obstructing substantive reforms to the hukou system. For comparison, this article highlights Vietnam, a communist country with a unitary land ownership system, which has made greater strides in reforming its household registration system.

Many countries use employer-sponsored visas to regulate migrant worker recruitment. By tying each sponsored migrant to a single employer, employer-sponsored visas have contributed to problems of workers being underpaid and mistreated. Through a critical assessment of temporary visas in Australia, particularly the Temporary Skill Shortage visa, and an analysis of relevant Australian and international literature, we argue that employer-sponsored visas are fundamentally flawed in their design and should be replaced. We consider various alternative options to employer sponsorship for regulating migrant worker recruitment before proposing the creation of a ‘mobility visa’, which would allow migrant workers to move freely between employers. We argue a mobility visa is a superior model for protecting worker equity and voice while also helping to address labour market needs.

For migrant workers who do not have access to other means of income, the platform economy offers a viable yet exploitative alternative to the conventional labour market. Migrant workers are used as a source of cheap labour by platforms – and yet, they are not disempowered. They are at the heart of a growing platform worker movement. Across different international contexts, migrants have played a key role in leading strikes and other forms of collective action. This article traces the struggles of migrant platform workers in Berlin and London to explore how working conditions, work experiences, and strategies for collective action are shaped at the intersection of multiple precarities along lines of employment and migration status. Combining data collected through research by the Fairwork project with participant observation and ethnography, the article argues that migrant workers are more than an exploitable resource: they are harbingers of change.

In recent migration research temporality has become a prominent figure. Focussing on temporality allows to shed light on some aspects of labour mobility that enlighten our understanding of work-related conflicts. Especially with view to labour market inclusion, migrants often experience the (assumed) temporal limitation and unpredictability of migration projects, work and residence permits, as well as employment relationships. Correspondingly, labour policies, sector-specific company structures and management techniques also have a temporal dimension (time limits, seasonality, outsourcing schemes), which have effects on conflicts in and around work. Furthermore, one has to situate labour and labour migration within its context of social reproduction in order to better understand, how paid wage labour is embedded in social activities and networks such as households, families and communities, and shaped by the social, developmental and migratory policies that condition workers’ labour market inclusion. This conceptual paper argues that for migrants in particular, the (assumed) temporal limitation and unpredictability of migration projects, work/residence permits, and employment relationships is of great importance when it comes to analysing conflict-ridden negotiations over labour relations and working conditions.

This paper presents the results of research, which highlights the situation during the pandemic in sectors characterised by low wages and a high turnover of workers. The empirical basis is formed by company case studies in the meat industry, postal services, and mask production in Germany and Austria. This paper discusses the significance of different locations (at and beyond the workplace) and forms (‘exit’ and ‘voice’) of labour unrest in sectors of the economy that are characterised by a predominance of the use of migrant labour. It questions how conflicts over migrant labour have been articulated and possibly changed in the pandemic, and what factors may have contributed not only to an upsurge but also to the containment, regulation, and repression, of labour unrest.

This paper focuses on the migrant pay gap in Spain. Going beyond descriptive evidence of the differences between immigrants and nationals in terms of wages, we analyse which part of the gross wage is most affected by features that cannot be captured using econometric models. Relying on microdata from the Wage Structure Survey, we divide the total gross wage into two main parts: base wage and wage supplements. Then we decompose the migrant wage gap into the explained and the unexplained terms, using a simple decomposition methodology, the Oaxaca-Blinder model. Our results show that a part of the differences in wage supplements does not seem to be explained by the set of control variables introduced in the model and that this effect is more pronounced when only men are considered. These findings offer a new perspective on the migrant pay gap in Spain and point to the importance of wage-setting practices related to wage supplements in explaining (and widening) the total migrant pay gap in our country.

We present a theoretical explanation for why migrant workers in China should be less likely to participate in protests than other categories of workers. While grievance-based theories of protest would suggest that migrant workers have more incentive to protest than other categories of workers, resource mobilization theory suggests that their capacity to mobilize for collective action is impeded by the conditions of their work situation and their residence. Using survey data from CGSS 2010, we test propositions derived from this framework. We find that a greater sense of relative deprivation is associated with a greater likelihood of participating in protest across all categories of workers. However, we also find that migrant worker status functions as a moderator between grievances and protest participation: compared to urban registered workers, migrant workers are significantly less likely to take part in protest activities when both of them have high levels of perceived unfairness. These findings are robust across all models.