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This chapter introduces the measures of working conditions and labor rights that are the focus of the book and shows how labor conditions changed in the late 20th century. The key working conditions are pay, hours of work, and workplace health and safety. The four key labor rights (emphasized in policy discussions by international organizations) are freedom of association, nondiscrimination, abolition of forced labor, and reduction of child labor. Evidence presented in this chapter shows that measures of these working conditions and labor rights improved during the late 20th century, a period of increased international economic integration. The data also show that countries that are open to international trade have superior labor conditions.

This final chapter summarizes the findings of the earlier analyses of the impact of globalization on labor conditions and considers the principles that should inform future policies to improve labor conditions. Broadly speaking, the evidence indicates that international trade, international migration, and the activities of multinational companies generally advance working conditions and labor rights around the world. In contrast, some policy proposals, such as the use of trade sanctions against countries that do not adopt international labor standards, are likely to worsen rather than improve labor conditions. A very useful guide to policy choice is to favor policies that expand, rather than contract, opportunities for target groups. The chapter reviews a number of targeted incentive policies that satisfy this principle in general and in particular areas such as child labor and forced labor.

Was blackness the key factor for labelling native people as ‘non-civilised’ and thus to be pushed into forced labour in Portuguese Africa? Without denying the importance of blackness as a stigmatising tool, this chapter argues, through a careful analysis of colonial law and practice, that the production of ‘nativeness’ was related to clear consciousness of Africans living outside the capitalist economy and social sphere. This helps us to understand that emerging forced labour represented not a smooth transition from slavery, but a rupture between two colonial ages and modes of production. Therefore, if colonial racism obviously used skin colour to construct a social bar, above all it used the definition of otherness as external to the capitalist sphere. Petty whites and natives could live side by side in suburban neighbourhoods, but in two impermeable spheres. Racism was pervasively present, but it was more social than racial.

This chapter examines the continuity and the resilience of slavery and other modes of forced or compulsory labour in the Portuguese colonial empire in Africa from the late nineteenth century. Addressing the major transformations of the political and moral economy of the ‘new Brazil’, it demonstrates how longstanding racial ideologies were crucial to the formulation of the country's doctrine of a civilising mission and to the development of the successive native policies that governed colonial populations – especially the native labour policy that legalised forced labour until the 1960s.

This chapter aims to improve our understanding of political modernization and state formation in Porfirian Chiapas ‘from below’, explaining specifically how the regime consolidated power within the Indian communities in order to carry out policies aimed at strengthening the national state and developing the export economy. The first section looks at the role of schoolteachers in secular state-building and the development of commercial agriculture from around 1855 until 1910. The second section examines the relationship between the jefaturas políticas, caciquismo, and forced labour, particularly in the export sector. The final section analyzes the impact of centralization and the role of coercion and consent in political and economic relationships in central and northern Chiapas. It argues that the Porfirian state achieved considerable hegemony by penetrating and manipulating ‘traditional’ structures of power in the countryside in order to consolidate the regime and modernize the economy.

In the first part of the chapter, views are discussed on the changing arrangements for social protection that have occurred in the last decade of the twentieth century in many, if not all, of the industrialized nations. Some see these changes as a marginal adjustment in the borders of the welfare state, while others perceive the changing landscape of industrialized welfare states as the embodiment of major revisions in the principles and philosophy of social protection. Most welfare state analysts acknowledge that the reforms are spurred by the need for greater labour force adaptability and productivity in a global economy, by concerns on the erosion of individual responsibility, and by new institutional arrangements for social protection involving market competition. The last part of the chapter addresses the two main theories on how welfare states evolve – convergence under the pressures of broad impersonal structural forces, or divergence into distinct regimes responding to human interventions shaped by socio‐political factors.

This chapter compares retirement expectations, retirement patterns, and expectations of future work across different cohorts of the Health and Retirement Study, including the new cohort of Baby Boomers currently in their late fifties. The Boomers appear more strongly attached to the labor force as they enter their retirement years than were earlier cohorts at the same age. Compared to the preceding birth cohort, they expect to retire nearly one year later, they are 14% more likely to expect to be working full-time at age 65, and they are 21% more likely to expect to work in the future if they are not currently working. These differences are not entirely explained by cohort differences in socioeconomic status, pension incentives, demographics, or health. In all, Baby Boomers may have stronger preferences for work than previous cohorts.

This chapter investigates non-traditional work and retirement patterns among older individuals in the Health and Retirement Study. It first reviews the evidence on retirements that initially involve bridge jobs or some form of partial retirement. It then looks at analysis on retirement reversals in which individuals resume or increase work activity following a period of retirement. Almost one third of the individuals in the sample who are ever partially or fully retired make at least one transition from more to less retired during the period of observation. The chapter also explores the characteristics of individuals making such transitions.

This chapter begins by outlining the economic and demographic realities facing employers, and spells out how these change the ‘retirement promise’. The effects of several factors on older workers' retirement patterns are quantified, including early retirement incentives in DB plans, retiree medical coverage, and various work/life benefits including phased retirement and eldercare programs. The potential increase in older workers' labour force participation from changing these benefit offerings are estimated. It is argued that these will only marginally offset expected gaps between labour supply and demand in the coming decade.

This chapter discusses the reception of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and International Labour Convention No. 29 concerning Forced or Compulsory Labour in the case law of the Strasbourg bodies. The receptiveness of to international child rights law in the Strasbourg case law was impressive. The ECHR contains few specific references to child rights, and its general provisions needed to be adapted in order to meet the changing international standards. While Contracting States have an important margin of appreciation in family law and juvenile justice, this did not prevent the Court from referring and applying international child rights law. A different trend is apparent, however, in relation the sexual abuse and forced labour of children, where the Court relied on older or less specific international instruments.

This chapter focuses on early retirement, explaining why at a time of increasing longevity, and in particular healthy and active longevity, there is a continual withdrawal from the labour force of men and women who have not yet reached the formal age of retirement. While the expectation of a healthy life has been steadily growing, between 1950 and 1995 the estimated average age in the UK of the transition from economic employment to economic inactivity by older workers fell from 67.2 to 62.7 years for men and from 63.9 to 59.7 years for women. There are three main explanations for this change. First, economists have taken the view that there exist within most national pension systems incentives to retire. Second, sociologists argued that changes within the workplace and labour market have forced employees to withdraw. Finally, there are the changing attitudes of the workers and a growing internalisation of retirement as an extended period of funded leisure and consumption.