Seminar 5: Gender, welfare and citizenship in a globalising world

University of Hull, Monday 1 October 2007

Venue: Seminar Room, Graduate School

how to get to Hull

how to get to the University

The seminar will begin at 12 noon and finish c.5pm.

Ruth Pearson, University of Leeds
“Beyond Women Workers: Gendering Corporate Social Responsibility”

Elisabetta Pernigotti, Université Paris Diderot
“Unemployment insurance transformations and the precarious female labour market: a case study of rural France”

Francesca Scrinzi, University of Glasgow
“Migrations, domestic labour and the restructuring of the welfare state in Italy”

Mick Wilkinson, University of Hull
“Who will protect the unprotected? Gender and Contemporary Slavery in the UK”

Fiona Williams, University of Leeds
“Theorising Migration and Home-based Care in Western Welfare States”

for further information and how to book, please contact Majella Kilkey at the University of Hull.

Abstracts

Ruth Pearson
Professor of Development Studies, University of Leeds

“Beyond Women Workers: Gendering Corporate Social Responsibility”
Though there is now a great deal of attention to the question of women workers and Corporate Social Responsibility (csr), a more far reaching analysis, which is informed by feminist economics approaches, stresses the importance of the gendered nature of the institutional context in which value chains operate, and the importance of acknowledging that labour markets are themselves gendered institutions which reflect socially constructed divisions of labour. This paper explores what a more holistic approach to corporate social responsibility might mean, especially when explored through the lens of gender analysis. I use the concept of social reproduction to examine the kinds of issues a gendered approach to csr might embrace, with particular attention to the "social", in terms of the reproduction of the labour power used in production. I apply this scrutiny to the emblematic example of the current spate of murders of young women in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, the location of thousands of manufacturing assembly plants producing for export to the United States. The paper concludes with some suggestions of initiatives which might be developed to incorporate a gendered dimension into a more comprehensive notion of CSR.

Elisabetta Pernigotti
Researcher, Université Paris Diderot

“Unemployment insurance transformations and the precarious female labour market: a case study of rural France”

The aim of the paper is to analyse some reforms of the French unemployment benefits scheme in the context of recent
labour market transformations, namely the development of the precarious care sector. I will present a case
study of rural precarious French women having experienced unemployment. On the basis of the findings
from this case study, I will argue for a gendered displacement of the welfare recipient’s position under
the contradictory pressure of post-industrial social relations.

Francesca Scrinzi
Lecturer in the Sociology of Gender, University of Glasgow

“Migrations, domestic labour and the restructuring of the welfare state in Italy”

This paper examines the intersections between female migrations, the increasing demand for domestic services and the reorganization of the Italian welfare state. In the nineties, social policies have shifted towards the co-participation of non-profit organizations and the State in the provision of social and sanitary services. In the domestic service sector, direct employment is most common; however a certain number of social cooperatives provide home-based domestic and care work for the elderly. The attribution of cash benefits tends to favour the sector’s fragmented organization. The Catholic Church has a central position in the organization of this sector. Informal training and recruitment activities for migrant domestic workers are held in parishes and catholic associations.

Mick Wilkinson
Research Fellow, Department of Social Sciences, and the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of Hull

“Who will protect the unprotected? Gender and Contemporary Slavery in the UK”

Women are key commodities in the global pool of cheap migrant labour and in the international sex trade. In the UK there is a growing evidence base to suggest that the trafficking and abuse of women and young girls is both extensive and on the increase and that for the (primarily male) exploiters, this is proving a high gain, low risk enterprise. It is also clear that there are tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of migrant workers suffering appalling exploitation in the UK at the hands of unscrupulous employers and gangmasters and that women migrant workers are the most susceptible to the worst forms of exploitation.
This paper argues that UK government agency has been a key contributory factor in the rapid growth of these forms of exploitation. Specifically: (i) that a deliberate and ill conceived programme of deregulation and large scale ‘managed
migration’ instituted in order to fill gaps in the low paid labour market has created an environment in which exploiters thrive; and (ii) that the official approach to trafficking has had minimal impact on the traffickers and has exacerbated rather than eased the problems of those trafficked. It concludes with recommendations for policy change.

Fiona Williams
Professor of Social Policy, University of Leeds

“Theorising Migration and Home-based Care in Western Welfare States”

This paper is about the increased employment of migrant women in domestic and care work in private households, a phenomenon captured by the term ‘the global care chain’. Helpful as this concept is in identifying a phenomenon that previously had no name, most of the studies in this field explore the gendered and racialised dynamics of migration and employment policies and practices; relatively few explore the role that care policies and practices may have in shaping, directly or indirectly, these dynamics. Drawing on the methods and findings from a qualitative empirical research project, which takes as its context the intersections between child care and migration policies and practices in three European countries, the paper builds a ‘Russian doll’ approach to the theoretical and normative frames for understanding this phenomenon, moving from meso- to micro- and on to macro-level. It ends by arguing for a normative analysis based on global justice and the ethics of care.

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