Françoise Carré

Working in large food retailers in France and the USA: the key role of institutions

Despite numerous similarities between the food retail sectors of France and the USA, there are significant contrasts in the jobs, and in particular the modal job, cashier. Notably, there are differences in pay, productivity and physical working position. Using the concept of ‘national-sectoral models’ of employment practices, this research draws on in-depth, interview-based case studies of food retailers in France and the USA, as well as standard data sources, to probe the reasons for these differences. Cross-national differences in wage-setting institutions, along with other institutional differences linked to family roles and disparate shopping cultures in the two countries, are key causes. These differences play out in interaction with distinct labour supply patterns, themselves based in part on differing institutions regarding reproduction of the labour force.

Informal Employment in the Global South: Globalization, Production Relations, and “Precarity”

Abstract In this chapter, we aim to illustrate some of the forms taken by informal employment in the global south and how these can best be understood by adopting a wider analytical lens than has been applied in much of the precarious employment literature. We draw on the findings of a recent study of the working conditions of urban informal workers from 10 cities in the global south. The study consisted of focus groups (15 in each city) conducted through the framework of a participatory informal economy appraisal as well as a survey of 1,957 home-based workers, street vendors, and waste pickers. Our findings illustrate a number of ways in which these three groups of informal workers are embedded within the formal economy. While they are not engaged in wage employment, they play subordinate roles to both formal sector firms within global production networks and unequal production relations and to the state through, inter alia, constrained access to public spaces and regulation. In order to interpret these findings, we apply Agarwala’s (2009) “relational” lens to demonstrate how risks and costs are transferred to workers who constitute the “real economy” in much of the global south. Given the often disguised connections between informal employment and the formal economy, this approach also provides a bridge to understanding precarious working conditions and the effects of globalization outside of the industrialized north.

A Framework for International Comparative Analysis of the Determinants of Low-Wage Job Quality

Much, indeed most, analysis of job quality is carried out within specific national contexts. But globally, the largest differences in job quality are cross national; these comparisons potentially offer the greatest analytical leverage in understanding the determinants of job quality. They also enable us to consider policy options not otherwise considered when we focus on a single national context.

Book Review Symposium: Caroline Lloyd and Jonathan Payne, Skills in the Age of Over-Qualification: Comparing Service Sector Work in EuropeLloydCarolinePayneJonathanSkills in the Age of Over-Qualification: Comparing Service Sector Work in EuropeOxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, £55 hbk, (ISBN: 9780199672356), 288 pp.

Heterogeneous ‘products’ and shifting sector boundaries create challenges for research on service economy jobs. Much progress has been made in recent years. Caroline Lloyd and Jonathan Payne make a further contribution by addressing the factors that shape tasks and worker autonomy as essential components of job quality. Concerned with low average service job quality and worker over-qualification in the UK, the authors examine the interactions among product market, qualification systems and work organization to single out effects on the following dimensions: qualification requirements; discretion over content and delivery; autonomy from monitoring targets; and influence in decision making. They ask how much institutional context and managerial practice affect job design, and skill utilization with studies of three occupations – vocational hairdressing teachers (‘high’/professional); fitness instructors (‘middle’); and modern ‘cafe’ workers (low) – across France, Norway, and the UK. The authors stress social relations and power struggles as central to understanding institutions’ impacts. Power struggles permeate management thinking and worker expectations of relationships at work with resulting nationally distinctive impacts on work organization and skill utilization. The authors argue that educating the UK out of ‘low-wage hell’ cannot deliver improvements because corporate structures, institutional influences, and low worker power result in work organizations that under-utilize worker skill and input. Credentialing systems; regulated and bargained compensation; and the (lack of) integration of worker organizations into consultative structures for training, work organization, and compensation matter as mediated by sector institutions and characteristics and tempered by managerial practices, thus yielding within-country variations in skills and autonomy across firms. Institutional context is not destiny. Norway’s patterns of strong vocational apprenticeships, active participation of unions at all levels, wage compression, and avoidance of steep hierarchies do not prevail in the ‘new’ fitness industry with its low credential requirements. France, with centralized education, government sanctioned credentialing, 748310WES0010.1177/0950017017748310Work, employment and societyBook review book-review2018

Formal and Informal Work: The Hidden Work Regime in Europe

Nancy Abelmann’s book, The Intimate University, reveals stories of Korean American students at the University of IllinoisUrbana/Champaign, where she has been teaching for many years. She indicates that the American public image of Korean and other Asian Americans is that of model minorities whose racial characteristics do not have a negative effect on their academic achievements and socioeconomic mobility. But she shows that Korean American students, the largest ethnic group at the university, are socially segregated, which dogs the liberal promise of the university emphasizing the ideology of multiculturalism. The author points out that at the time she started the book project, a journalist contacted her to complete an article about Korean students’ ‘‘self-segregation’’ for Time magazine. However, in her view, racism and racial stereotypes are the main sources of Korean students’ social segregation at the university. She is not afraid to point out that the university administration is not concerned about Korean students’ social segregation, which contradicts the ideal of a multicultural education. Thus the main objective of the book is to show that Korean students at the University of Illinois cannot leave the their ethnic ‘‘comfort zone’’ due to racism and racial stereotypes. In addition, Ablemann also shows exceptions to stereotypical images of Asian Americans, associated with the model minority thesis, as ‘‘hardworking and successful,’’ and seeking ‘‘instrumental striving and materialism.’’ Through the voices of several students and some of their parents, she makes clear that both Korean students and their parents also stress the importance of a liberal education. As an anthropologist, Abelmann used ethnographic research as the major research technique for this book. She talked to the student informants about ‘‘how they managed their lives and studies in college; how they envisioned life after college; and when it mattered to them . . . how their families figured in their college lives’’ (p. 4). She took the intergenerational approach, analyzing stories of not only students, but also some of their parents. She took the transnational approach by looking at the parent generation’s history and educational aspirations back in Korea. Although she interviewed over fifty students for this book, each chapter focuses on each of several members of the Han extended family and a few other Korean students. By devoting four of the seven chapters to members of the Han family, including two children, their parents, their cousin and uncle, the author has made the book an intergenerational family study. While three chapters (Chapters Four through Six) respectively focus on each of the male members of the Han family, the last chapter introduces narratives of two immigrant women from the Han extended family to capture women’s concerns and gender issues. The author’s intergenerational and transnational approaches and her focus on family, class and gender bordering South Korea and the United States reflect her ongoing research interest in these topics, reflected in her previous publications. Abelmann is partly successful in dispelling stereotypes of Korean and other Asian Americans associated with the model minority image. Several studies have documented that Korean and other Asian immigrant parents emphasize their children’s achievement and success in school and push their children to choose science, law, medicine and business related to high-paying and high-status careers. These studies and journalistic stereotypes tend to give the general image that Asian immigrant parents and to a less extent Asian American students only emphasize the instrumental value of college education, failing to recognize the value of liberal studies. But this book shows that many Korean students and their parents do