The desire for something better: learning and organising in the new world of work

Abstract

There is an increasing polarisation of income, job opportunities and access to education in the advanced economies. Simultaneously there is a continuing reordering of economic relations between the advanced and the newly industrialising economies, as there is also within the newly industrialising economies. This process is often explained by a too-easy reference to an ill-defined 'globalisation' However, if the advanced economies are being restructured in such a way that sees jobs in industries such as manufacturing disappear, then we need to examine where and in what conditions those jobs reappear. Changes to the contours of work, employment and education in one part of the world need to be understood in the context of a concomitant reshaping of those same relations in other parts of the world.