Interrogating the ‘Post-Neoliberal Moment’ in Labour Law: Conflict, Institutional Change and the Political Economy of Labour
Over the past few years, debates in labour law scholarship have increasingly focused on labour policy and governance under what are often described as ‘right-wing populist’, ‘illiberal’ or ‘authoritarian’ regimes, thereby aligning with a broader trend in social sciences and humanities. These studies often presuppose a clear departure from a previous neoliberal phase. However, coming to terms with the idea of a ‘post-neoliberal’ moment entails, first and foremost, understanding the dimensions and extent of the neoliberal reshaping of labour law.
This conference seeks to examine this. It invites contributions that scrutinise the evolution of labour law from the late 1970s to the present, with an aim to move away from micro-level analyses focused on the standard employment relationship and the contract of employment, towards macro-level analyses that contextualise the changes in the regulation of the labour-capital conflict within the reorganisation of the economic and political orders under neoliberalism. The conference, therefore, seeks to complicate some common assumptions about the changes in labour governance over the past few decades. Specifically, the conference posits the question of how to account for contemporary transformations in the regulation of the labour-capital conflict that put specific institutional arrangements in dialogue with changes in the economy and political rationality over the past four decades. Furthermore, the conference seeks to understand contemporary changes in the political subjectivity of labour — normally framed under the label of ‘precarious’ work— wherein social markers of gender, race and migration status challenge the historical worker archetype of labour law. Interdisciplinary investigations are particularly encouraged, especially those that connect changes in contemporary work dynamics with the sociology of labour, economics, political theory, geography and arts.