On 12 April 2023, our monthly Journal Club discussed the book “Managing the margins: gender, citizenship, and the international regulation of precarious employment”, written by Leah Vosko (2010). The book investigates the precarious margins of labour markets, with a multi-method and interdisciplinary approach. Therefore, we collectively picked this book for the proximity of the explored concepts with our interest for the “border of the labour market”.
To delineate the margins of labour markets, Vosko uses the concepts of standard employment relationship and precarious employment. The first is based on three pillars – the bilateral employment relationship, the standardized working time, and the continuous employment – while the former represented the deviations from that. It is shaped by the interaction between different factors, like employment status, form of employment, and dimensions of labour market insecurity. In doing so, Vosko looks to the interplay between the employment norms, gender relations, and citizenship boundaries.