Edward Elgar Publishing Handbook of Labour Geography

This illuminating Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the exciting field of labour geography, examining how spatial circumstances shape workers’ lives and behaviour as well as how workers shape landscapes. It explores the history of labour geography, how the field has developed globally and how labour geographers have conceptualised worker agency. Leading and emerging scholars illustrate how geographical contexts influence worker activity, including exploring how mass labour movements are adapting to emerging economic landscapes, how industrial and service sector workers are responding to new spatial realities they face, how workers are adapting to and challenging labour market precarity, as well as how workers interact with the environment. Detailed international case studies include examining autoworkers’ strikes in South China, Polish migrant workers’ experiences in Northern Ireland, Australian mineworkers’ struggles and issues of space and gender in home-based work in India. The Handbook also introspectively reflects upon how the transformation of universities due to market pressures is reshaping labour geographers’ research and the spaces in which they work. Students and scholars of labour economics, employment studies and political and economic geography will greatly benefit from this incisive Handbook. Interdisciplinary in scope, it is also an essential resource for academics in political science, international relations, migration studies and environmental studies.