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This chapter proposes two paths forward for reducing workaway and building a more just market in Europe. It does so by employing the theory of Optimum Labour Areas, as introduced in Chapter 3. First, Europe could create an Optimum Labour Area (OLA) that limits market integration to those areas that are least threatening to member state policy autonomy. An OLA provides local elected officials with the tools they need to stabilize local economies, such that workers are not forced to migrate in search of better employment opportunities. The second path recognizes that Europe will remain a sup-optimum labour area but gives the European Union greater power and resources to help local labour markets stabilize.

Typically the CV is criticised as self-aggrandisement or the commodification of the self for the market. Building on emergent research on jobseeking, both off and on-line, this chapter examines CV advice books and the interface of LinkedIn as a networked platform. Moreover the CV is explored here as a confession of the self; not just as a profession of faith in the self and the market, but as a process of self-scrutiny and reflection which avows unemployment as a personal fault. Following a longer history, the CV is an inheritor of the demand to ‘tell the truth about the self’ which is a transformative trial for the self, in a power relation, once with an abbot or priest, but now with a work coach. Furthermore, the audience of the CV is not always embodied, but distant – God or the Market is the judge of the worth of the person and the truth of their confession. Thus, the CV is not a neutral representation, but entices individuals to internalise the perspective of potential employers and the judgements of welfare officials.

This chapter reports the growth of the Norwegian shipping trade in the period 1850-1880; an expansion that came as a result of a heightened demand for the exports of fish and timber from Norway to Western and Southern Europe. It provides a detailed history on Norwegian shipping trade, starting from the early days of expansion to Norway’s position as a leading whaling nation. The chapter provides statistical data in the form of numbers of recruitment, labour force, and wages, but notes that source material on Norwegian shipping data prior to 1800 is often scarce and unreliable. The report also outlines the significance of Norwegian presence in foreign fleets after 1850, and discusses the motive behind a seaman’s decision to emigrate. It notes that the Dutch fleet became a popular option for Norwegians, while seamen also flocked to the alternative fleets of Russia; Denmark; Sweden; Holland; France; Great Britain; North America; Argentina; Australia and South Africa.

The Italian labour market has been put under very strong pressure since the onset of the financial and economic crisis. After the 2011 sovereign debt crisis a new wave of reforms started in relation to labour market policies. Although it is not possible to detect a single trajectory of change in Italian labour market policies, we can observe an overall tendency toward a peculiar version of ‘welfare readjustment’, a pattern of reform in which governments curtail such policies as income or job protection for insiders, while adopting new social policies. This ‘readjustment process’ has been realised through the adoption of some provisions that favour ‘outsiders’ and, at the same time, the drastic retrenchment of labour rights for workers on open-ended contracts. As a result, the boundaries between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ now appear more blurred than they were before the outbreak of the Great Recession.

This chapter first charts the short history from the early anti-trafficking strategy put in place by the Labour government in 2007 through the changes and reorganisations of the subsequent 10 years, including the launch of the modern slavery strategy in 2015 under then Home Secretary May. While focusing on the impacts felt by workers in the UK, it also takes into account the position adopted by the UK in relation to international frameworks. The second section then focuses on the importance and potential impact of the creation of the most recent governance and enforcement structures — for example, the Director of Labour Market Enforcement and the evolution of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA). As of May 2017, the GLA was rebranded as the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and has new powers to investigate serious exploitation across the whole UK labour market. The third section asks how we can best assess and evaluate the effectiveness of the modern slavery agenda.

This chapter assesses the range of preventive interventions in labour market regulation. In relation to preventive orders in labour market enforcement, the chapter queries whether there are good reasons to resort to criminal law in situations where civil enforcement mechanisms might be improved. This also raises uncomfortable questions of a government that has presided over onerous tribunal fees impeding access to justice, and the pursuit of deregulation of labour standards and restriction of trade unions. The chapter considers whether the enforcement crisis is being produced by ‘bad’ employers or by the political choices of our elected representatives. The most effective form of prevention would be worker-protective labour law, supported by access to justice and strong trade unions. Preventive criminal law is a response to an avoidable crisis that has been brought about by specific political choices. Nevertheless, the penetration of these preventive orders into labour law fits with the more general expansion of preventive criminal measures in different spheres of social life.

Chapter 1 defends the need for new indicators of ‘gender awareness’ within skilled immigration policy. It draws upon research from feminist industrial relations, sociology, economics and intersectional feminist studies, to this end. The chapter focuses upon three key areas of the scholarship: Gender mainstreaming processes and institutions, life course differences between men and women and gendered definitions of ‘skill’, bringing in feminist critiques of human capital theory that predominates within skilled immigration debates.

This chapter begins with an introduction to Finnish shipping prior to 1700, before discussing in detail its expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and exploring the country’s integration into the international maritime world. The report includes estimations of numbers of crew and officers in the Finnish Merchant Marine during this era of growth and provides information on social structure, ages, wages and working conditions while addressing the difficulties in presenting complete and reliable data.

Jobseeking is an inescapable task within the modern labour market, especially, for the unemployed, who have obligations to find work imposed upon them by welfare conditionality. Finding work, selling yourself, scrutinising failures and chasing success are all imposed upon the unemployed under threat of sanctions. To understand this penitential journey, this chapter examines how the medieval model of pilgrimage shapes jobseeking, drawing extensively from Turner’s work on liminality. Specifically, pilgrimages begin with self-examination and are undertaken in contrition for sins, just as jobseeking is obligatory for the unemployed who are considered personally responsible for their lack of work. Through their journey of seeking salvation, both pilgrims and jobseekers relentlessly search for meaning, deciphering opaque signs from the market or providence; dangers and opportunities must be recognised. Finally, arrival at a shrine or job is considered transformative. Yet, in a world of precarious unemployment, these purifying and edifying journeys are not just required but recurrent, an interminable career of self-transformation, often under duress, in which individuals are repeatedly subjected to economic judgement, which decides their worth – usually through continuous rejection, relentless testing their hopes and faith in the labour market and themselves.